Editing Understanding Fidel Castro (section)

== Martí and Fidel: The Creator and the Applicator ==



Marcus Eagan

“La inteligencia tiene dos fases distintas: la de creación y la de aplicación: cuando aquélla no se une a ésta, hace desventurados y mártires, enfermos incurables del dolor perpetuo de la vida: la de aplicación, con ser menos noble, es más adecuada y necesaria a la existencia: una y otra mezcladas, son el germen escondidos del bienestar de un país.” –  José Martí, Bolitines de Orestes, 1875


With his successful revolution, Fidel Castro imbued discontent Latin Americans with the sense of hope he received from reading Cuban patriot José Martí. Consequently, Castro influenced a litany of similar guerilla struggles throughout Latin America from 1959 through the present day.<ref name="Wright2001"/> A more complicated relationship exists between Castro and his purported influence, José Martí. Castro’s importance to the ideological fabric of Latin America at-large implies the importance of understanding Martí. Misunderstanding Castro has led to out-of-date and ineffective policies like the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba, and Castro has been discredited in the U.S., based a highly politicized image given to us by Cuban-American exiles.
Since Castro has claimed that Martí provided him the impetus for his revolutionary insurrections, readers often assume that Mart must have been a Marxist. This view is often taken because Cuba’s shift to a Marxist-Lennist economic model contradicted the hegemonic U.S. model, shook the global geopolitical climate and it made the small island a major world player. Yet neither Martí’s own works nor the literature about him suggest that he endorsed Marx’s model of political economy, though he did not necessarily take a strong position against socialistic  policies either. Martí’s ideological ambiguity on Marxism has led scholars like John M. Kirk on the (Revolutionary) left, and Carlos Ripoll on the (Traditional) right to argue Martí’s stance on Marxism.  Their squabbles overlook the points of connection between Martí and Castro, which run deeper than Marxism.
What rhetoric scholar Donald Rice calls the “Teleological School” seems to elucidate a more important connection between Martí and Castro: both Martí and Castro desired Cuban independence most, and they would both go on to risk their lives to lead revolutionary movements fueled by their romanticized language.  Rafael Rojas, also of the Teleological school, articulates a central point of connection between Martí and Fidel in an “Essay on the First Cuban Republic”: “Martí’s political literature is in good measure an argument in favor of the moral capacity of late nineteenth century Cuban society to constitute itself as a modern citizenship.”  Although the debate on Martí and Fidel tends to focus on the issue of Marxism, the real connection between the two relates to their desire to protect Cuba from American colonial ambition, to maintain Cuban autonomy, and to garner popular support through the rhetorical technique of romantic transcendence.