Editing Understanding Fidel Castro (section)

== Romantic Transcendence ==

Many revolutionary and exile scholars focus on rhetoric when discussing whether or not a link exists between Martí, Marxism and Castro. A focus on rhetoric is obviously important when studying a figure like Martí or Castro, and Castro certainly did link Martí to Marxism in early speeches during the revolutionary period. Yet a more helpful analytical triangle might be Martí, el espiritú, and Castro. Given the fact that most Cubans did not know much about Marx during Martí’s life, linking Marx and Martí is speculative. Martí and Castro share a greater connection in their romanticized rhetorical appeals to Cubans’ spirits, the discursive technique of romantic transcendence. Martí and Castro targeted the Cuban soul, and gained much of their support through explicitly religious language. The other context of their appeals, though not completely separate from religion, is the body. Non-Spanish readers often lose that sense of spirituality in translation, so I have returned to the primary texts. Although scholars from the revolutionary and exile schools both debate the legitimacy of Castro’s tendency to link Marxism to Martí as a rhetorical means of justification, the revolutionaries are more significantly linked through their attempts to deify themselves in Cubans’ spirits through romantic  transcendence.  
Martí garnered support for his revolution thanks to his romanticized poetics and Christ-like self-characterization. Romantic transcendence may be defined as using a romanticized or religious lexicon to elevate oneself in the spirits of listeners. Martí left a lasting impression on everyday Cuban consciousness, so much that when walking through Havana on any given day, one can still hear, “Yo soy un hombre sincero/ De donde crece la palma/ y antes de morrirme/ quiero echar mis versos del alma.”  Those are the first versos of the versos sencillos, and, with allusions to “la palma,” the anticipation of his own death, and “el alma,” they sound like a promise from a Christ-like figure. Martí struck a spiritual chord of Cuban hatred, too, when he used “mortifique” (from mortificar) to describe what the United States had been doing to Latin America.  Even though “to mortify” does not strike the American English reader as especially religious, mortificar bares religious connotations to most Latin American readers and—presumably—Martí. Martí even said in one letter to Maximo Gomez that he held, “la honda de David.”  Marí utilized the David versus Goliath ethos in much of his work; its subsequent adoration, often emphasizing the underdog, reflects this ethos. Thus, Martí successfully elevated himself to the pedestal necessary to mobilize a people that might opt to sit on the Malécon with El Ron de Cuba without a dynamic like Martí. In his own revolution, Castro used the same tool of Romantic Transcendence to mobilize the Cuban people.
Castro often invoked religious language in secular arguments in order to gain popular support, too. In his speech La Historia Me Absolverá, readers see countless examples of Romantic Transcendence. The title of the speech, though, speaks volumes. In Cuban slave societies, like others, the slave’s immediate goal was manumission, but their masters instilled in them the ultimate goal, salvation. It made the masters more money. To express the possibility of salvation, many slave owners used the term “absolver.”  The soul of the Cuban carries the heavy legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, and it makes sense because much of the North American slave trade depended on the island for slaves. Here, readers see Castro making a very specific religious appeal, targeted at the sort of people that would believe in the ideas of the appeal to the point that they would rise up in arms to defend its progenitor.  
Castro and Martí also created images of Romantic Transcendence with the compliment of foreign revolutionaries committed to the Cuban Revolution. Martí brought in a Dominican in Gomez, and Castro brought in Guevara, the Argentine. In garnering strong support from men born outside of Cuba, Martí and Castro compelled Cubans to stand up for their country, as prominent others from the outside were willing to do. Martí created the ultimate image of Romantic Transcendence when he charged ahead of his revolutionary fighters in Battle, only to be fatally shot off his horse in Cauto, near a river of the same name, which means careful or wary in Spanish. The symbolism is remarkable, and a wary young Castro exercised more caution than his inspiration. Since Martí was the first “fase” referred to in the opening quote of this essay, Castro needed to stay alive to implement “la creación.” Yet one time he tested the deep end when he jumped off a Cuban navy boat to free himself from custody and swam through miles of shark infested Cuban waters. Castro’s most romantically transcendental moment was when, on September 30th of 1959, he walked up to a podium to address to a crowd of more than 100,00 Cubans in Havana, and, before he spoke, two of a dozen doves released by someone in the crowd landed on his shoulder. A Cuban woman told me this symbolized peace in a Efik-Christian Cuban system of beliefs we North Americans call Santería. Castro’s comparable moments deserve mention because of their similarity to Martí.