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The contradictions of late nineteenth-century nationalist doctrines: three keys to the ‘globalism’ of José Martí’s nationalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

Armando García de la Torre
Armando García de la Torre
Affiliation:
Department of History, Eastern Washington University, 200 Patterson Hall, Cheney, WA 99004-2430, USA E-mail: agarcia1@ewu.edu
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Abstract

Scholarly literature on nineteenth-century nationalism concentrates on its strong exclusionary tendencies, while studies of the Cuban independence leader José Martí (1853–95) focus on his articulation of Cuban nationalism and pan-Latin American regionalism through his political activities and writings. This article identifies the globalism of Martí’s nationalism, moving beyond the national and regional frameworks to which studies of Martí have consigned the Cuban freedom fighter. It argues that the global history narratives that Martí wrote for children constitute critical and innovative components of his programme for national liberation and nation building, and encapsulate his nationalist ideology through three key components: the right to self-determination at the national level, the right to self-determination at the personal level, and a sense of global humanitarianism. The article’s transnational perspective places Martí, through his inclusionary, racially blind, humanitarian form of nationalism, as contradicting late nineteenth-century nationalist doctrines, and begs for ideas about the general intellectual climate of the period to be rethought.

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Articles
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Journal of Global History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 67 - 88
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Stefan-Ludwig, Hoffman, Civil society, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 76.Google Scholar

2 Many have translated La Edad de Oro as The Golden Age, but I prefer The Golden Years. Even though ‘age’ has a similar double meaning in Spanish, of the length of time an individual has lived and of a period in history, using ‘the golden age’ more readily conjures images of a golden period in time, rather than the precious, magical years in an individual’s life, one’s childhood, that to Martí were ‘golden’. In this sense, The Golden Years favours an understanding of childhood as actual golden years of life, more appropriate for a children’s magazine. Translating works into Spanish, among them Victor Hugo’s, Martí indicated, regarding his work as translator, that the best translations were not literal ones but those that best transfer the sentiment of an author’s expression from one language to another, remarking that ‘traducir es transpensar’ (‘to translate is to trans-“think”’, perhaps better expressed in English as to ‘transfer thoughts’).

3 José, Martí, Obras completas, 2nd edn, vol. 18, Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975, p. 296.Google Scholar All direct references to Martí’s work are my original translations from the Spanish, unless otherwise noted.

4 Jawaharlal, Nehru, Glimpses of world history: being further letters to his daughter, written in prison, and containing a rambling account of history for young people, London: Lindsay Drummond, 1939.Google Scholar The essay Nuestra América (‘Our America’) first appeared in Mexico’s El Partido Liberal newspaper in 1891.

5 See Jeffrey, Belnap and Raul, Fernández, eds. José Martí’s ‘Our America’: from national to hemispheric cultural studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

6 Salvador, Arias, Un proyecto martiano esencial: ‘La Edad de Oro’, Havana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2001, p. 68.Google Scholar Fryda Schultz de Montovani, ‘Introduction: “La Edad de Oro” de José Martí’ in José Martí, La Edad de Oro, San Salvador, El Salvador: Departmento Editorial Ministerio de Cultura, 1955, p. 22.

7 Andrés, Sorel, ed., José Martí: en los Estados Unidos, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1968, p. 12.Google Scholar

8 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 20, p. 149. Martí expressed, in a letter of 26 August 1889 to his friend Manuel Mercado, written on paper with The Golden Years’ letterhead, that ‘another windmill that turns in my head and a spear shaking in my hands: is the October convention” referring to the monetary conference.

9 Sorel, José Martí, p. 12.

10 For more on Martí’s Pan-Latin Americanism, see Enrico Mario Santí, ‘“Our America”, the gilded age, and the crisis of Latinamericanism’, in Belnap and Fernández, José Martí’s ‘Our America’, p. 188.

11 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 20, p. 147.

12 Ibid., vol. 12, p. 305.

13 Arias, Un proyecto martiano esencial, pp. 31–2.

14 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 6, p. 34.

15 Ibid., vol. 27, p. 198.

16 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 146.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., p. 148.

19 Ibid., p. 146.

20 Aaron da Costa Gómez, a wealthy Brazilian businessman in New York City, who came from a prominent merchant family, underwrote the publication of The Golden Years. The Da Costa Gómez brothers had business relationships throughout Latin America. Martí met Aaron, a New York Life Insurance agent, through Manuel Mercado, while living in Mexico City in the late 1870s, and while Aaron was an agent there.

21 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 20, p. 350.

22 I thank Cuban scholar Salvador Arias for providing this information.

23 Roberto Fernández Retamar, José Martí: La Edad de Oro. Edición crítica anotada y prologada por Roberto Fernández Retamar, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992, p. 12.

24 Silvia A. Barros, ‘La literatura para niños de José Martí en su época’, in José Olivio Jiménez, ed., Estudios críticos sobre la prosa modernista hispanoamericana, New York, NY: Eliseo Torres and Sons, 1975, p. 110.

25 Barros, ‘La literatura para niños de José Martí en su época,’ p. 108.

26 Félix Flores Varona, Traspasos de La Edad de Oro, Havana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana ‘Juan Marinello’, 2003, p. 15.

27 For more on Emerson in Martí, refer to José Ballón, Autonomía cultural americana: Emerson y Martí, Madrid: Pliegos, 1986; Anne, Fountain, José Martí and U.S. Writers, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003Google Scholar; Armando García de la Torre, ‘José Martí and the global dimensions of late nineteenth-century nation building’, PhD thesis, Washington State University, 2006.

28 Elena Jorge Viera, ‘Notas sobre la función de La Edad de Oro’ in Salvador Arias, ed., Acerca de La Edad de Oro, Havana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 1980, p. 314.

29 Arias, Un proyecto martiano esencial, p. 49. See also Herminio, Almendros, A propósito de ‘La Edad de Oro’: notas sobre literatura infantil, Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1972.Google Scholar

30 Noemí Beatriz Tornadú, ‘Introducción y vocabulario’ in José Martí, La Edad de Oro: publicación de recreo e instrucción dedicada a los niños de América, Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemil, 1966, pp. 18–19.

31 Arias, Un proyecto martiano esencial, p. 53.

32 José Ismael Gutiérrez, ‘José Martí y la traducción de cuentos para niños: tradición y originalidad’ Hispanofila, 141, 2004, p. 31.

33 Arias, Un proyecto martiano esencial, p. 172.

34 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 20, p. 153.

35 Ibid.

36 Fina García Marruz, ‘Lecciones de “La Edad de Oro”’, in Temas martianos: tercera serie, Havana: Centro de Estudio Martianos, 1995, p. 223.

37 John Lawrence, Tone, War and genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 37–8.Google Scholar Tone has an enlightening discussion on Martí’s sense of nationalism. For further reading on nationalism, see Benedict, Anderson, Imagined communities, London: Verso, 1991Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and nationalism since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990Google Scholar; Anthony, Smith, Theories of nationalism, London: Duckworth, 1971Google Scholar; and Stuart Woolf, ed., Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the present: a reader, London: Routledge, 1996.

38 Tone, War and genocide, pp. 37–8.

39 Ibid.

40 Graciella Cruz-Taura, ‘El pensamiento histórico de José Martí’, in Anna Housková, ed., Transcendencia cultural de la obra de José Martí: actas del simposio internacional celebrado en Praga, del 21 al 23 de octubre de 2002, Prague: Department of Philosophy and Letters, Charles University, 2003, p. 92.

41 Ibid., p. 94.

42 Ibid., p. 99.

43 Hodgkinson, Virginia A. and Foley, Michael W., eds, The civil society reader, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2003, x.Google Scholar

44 Peter, Singer, Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 10.Google Scholar

45 Martí followed the art of the Impressionists and wrote positive critiques of the latest French styles of art for Latin American newspapers. One of his favourite restaurants in New York City was Delmonico’s, where he celebrated his last birthday in January 1895, before leaving for Cuba to fight in the independence war against Spain. See Carlos Ripoll, Páginas sobré José Martí, New York: Editorial Dos Ríos, 1995.

46 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 18, p. 357.

47 Ibid., p. 359.

48 Ibid., p. 371.

49 See Michael, Adas, Machines as the measure of men: science, technology and ideologies of Western dominance, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.Google Scholar

50 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 20, p. 153.

51 Ibid.

52 Cruz-Taura, ‘El pensamiento histórico’, p. 95.

53 William, McNeill, The rise of the West: a history of the human community, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963.Google Scholar

54 I thank Cuban historian Graciella Cruz-Taura for this insight.

55 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 18, pp. 460–1.

56 Ibid., p. 461.

57 Ibid.

58 Fraser, Howard M., ‘La Edad de Oro and José Martí’s modernist ideology for children’, Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía, 42, 2, 1992, pp. 223–32.Google Scholar

59 Oscar, Montero, José Martí: an introduction, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

60 Ibid.

61 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 18, p. 462.

62 Ibid., p. 464.

63 Ibid., p. 369.

64 Ibid., p. 370.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid., p. 459.

68 Ibid., p. 467.

69 Ibid.

70 Hoffman, Civil society, p. 76.

71 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 18, pp. 366–7.

72 Ibid.

73 Tone, War and genocide, p. 38.

74 Martí, Obras completas, vol. 18, p. 466.

75 Ibid., p. 467.

76 Marnie, Hughes-Warrington, ‘Readers, responses, and popular culture’, in World histories, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 222.Google Scholar Hughes-Warrington affirms how children provide a malleable audience for teaching histories of meaning.

77 Schulman, Ivan A., José Martí: Ismaelillo, versos libres, versos sencillos, Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1999, p. 19.Google Scholar

78 Tornadú, ‘Introducción’, p. 17.