FEW KNOW OF CIRCULO MARTI IN WASHINGTON PARK

By Juan Montoya

Few — if any — Brownsville schoolchildren could tell you where the memorial for the man Cuban-Americans consider the Apostle of that island’s liberation is at in their city.
And probably most have seen the white marble memorial when they visit Washington Park for the Christmas light show, the Brownsville Police Department toy give away, or the SombreroFest during Charro Days.

There is a bust of George Washington, and even a huge rock monument for the Sons of the Confederacy that are better known at that park.

But the man who fought for Cuban independence from Spain and who coined the unforgettable verses inscribed in black lettering on the marble siding of the memorial is remembered in this border city.

“Men are divided into two bands,” reads one. “Those who love and build; and those who hate and destroy.”

José Julián Martí y Pérez was born in Havana, Cuba in January 28, 1853 — 162 years ago. At the time, he was the son of a peninsular official. Peninsulares on the island were Cubans born in Spain, and as such, afforded the privileges of the colonial power. The young Martí, however, did not share his father’s loyalty to a system that enslaved the black population which labored in the lucrative sugar plantations and who bore the brunt of the empire’s repression.
He soon rebelled against his father — a military official — and schemed to make the island independent from Spain.

He witnessed the whipping of black slaves in Havana and the cruelty of the imperial authorities revolted him.
“I saw it when I was a child, and I can still feel the shame burning on my cheeks,” he wrote as a man.
His adherence to independence soon led him to rail and publish against the crown, much to his father’s displeasure. Soon, after his teacher was arrested without cause for having encouraged his students to express their pro-independence stances against the government, Martí – at 16 – was sentenced to six years at hard labor in the stone quarries.

Only after his father’s influential friends intervened was he freed — nearly blind – and permanently scarred from the chains he wore and suffering from a hernia.
His imprisonment forged in him even more determination to end Spain’s reign over the agonized island. The authorities, in turn, exiled him to Spain.
While in Spain, Martí published a pro-Cuban independence newspaper. The turmoil in the colonies eventually forced the crown to abdicate and the Spanish republic encouraged him to advocate his cause even more strongly. But soon he found that the republic was no better than the crown was on the Cuban question and he left to find refuge in México.

“Never are the shores of exile as beautiful as when one bids them farewell,” he would write later.
His stay in México would only serve to disillusion the young revolutionary. During his stay, the constitutional president, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, was deposed by Porfirio Díaz, who would remain in power for the next 30 years.
Martí decided his place was in Cuba and arrived in the island under a false identity from México. But under pressure from Cuban authorities, he left Cuba and married Carmen Zayas Bazan in México.
Upon his return to Cuba, he was again arrested and deported to Spain which he left to trave to France and then the United States.
By then it was 1880, and Martí fomented revolution in New York and wrote some of his most memorable verses in exile. Although he is recognized as a erudite spokesman for Cuban liberation, his Versos Libres gained him recognition as a first-rate poet and writer.
But the revolutionary movement in Cuba was beset by division and obstacles that made it impossible for the native-born leadership to ascertain power. Martí became a spokesman for the independence movement throughout Latin America. His plans to invade Cuba failed and in 1895, he died in battle fighting for Cuban independence.
Soon after, in 1898, the United States entered the war and established a military government. Cuba, again, came under foreign domination.
In 1902, a puppet Cuban government signed the Platt Amendment which placed the island (and Guantanamo Bay) under U.S. control.
Fifty seven years later, Fidel Castro overthrew the Fulgencio Batista regime and placed the island under a communist government.
From beyond, Martí’s voice still calls out like his verse, “There are some things that are glorious; The sun in the sky and freedom on earth.”Cuba awaits.