From: Citizens of Brownsville
As a resident of this city, I am extending you my sincerest apology for the shameful treatment given by my fellow city residents and city administration to the monument to your hero and fighter against the oppressive Spanish colonial government Jose Marti.
I have often walked by the tribute to your hero and read the quotes of his poems. Not only were they enlightening for their elegance and style, but also for the depth and breadth of content that showed Marti's love for his fellow men and freedom of the human race.
His writing was not one of hate, human enslavement, secession, or division. If anything, he spoke of men's yearning for freedom, self-determination and the uplifting of all.
I, for one, thank you for presenting this elegant (and eloquent) monument to the city of Brownsville.
But it appears that a brutish element of our city has instead opted to destroy, rather than build and have vandalized your gift to us. This is the epitome of putting pearls before swine. It's a small consolation to know that others' gifts to our city have suffered the same fate. The willful damage doe to the paintings by art students on the Capitol Theater is but one example, as is the hateful graffiti on the walls around downtown.
When the Jefferson Davis Highway Memorial was defaced with red spray paint, the city moved to clean it up and remove the slogans someone painted on it. In the case of the monument to Marti, the city did nothing to repair it or to seek the perpetrators. Instead, it has been allowed to remain broken and in pieces, with its plaques missing. Marti's bust was a long time ago stolen and never replaced.
This is a curious and instructive contrast.
In your case, the monument honors a man's struggle – and his martyrdom – to free an entire people from the oppression of a colonial power. It belonged in Washington Park with the monuments to George Washington and Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, men who struggled to overthrow the yoke of oppression on their people from the colonial powers that were.
In the Davis memorial, it honors a man who was the president of a breakaway group which battled, committed treason against their homeland, killed their brothers, and died trying to maintain their way of life of which enslaving black people – our brothers – and keeping them as property was a cornerstone.
We seem to have our moral compass awry here.
I can't really blame you for wanting to remove your gift to our city to a place where it will be more appreciated. It will no longer be there to instruct our fellow citizens that men were willing to die for a people to be free. Instead, we will continue to glorify a man who fought to keep other people enslaved.
Again, my apologies to our Cuban community.
9 comments:
You are selective with your apologies. Where is your apology to those who would offended at the desecration of the Jefferson Davis monument. More of them in
Browsville, than Cubans.
Great article! Hate to change the subject but does anyone know what bronze is going for at Wilkerson’s?
You are a fucking idiot. So what if this is selective.
Well, if it is OK for people who hate Davis to fuck up his marker, why is it bad for people to fuck up some Cuban's marker. Folks like and hate both, what is the diff?
Pinche cubanos llorones. they say they do not grow a mustache because they look like Hispanics. Well screw all of you.
Fuk the Cubans in town
What have they done
If they've done so much why aren't any schools named after any of them
Remember that dumb Cuban that was robbing banks down town? I do! He scared the shit out of me. Pinche handout seeking system exploiting, deserters of their country who now claim Cuban pride! Send them back, in a raft. Then we'llsee who misses them a d what if any contributions they bro g to America.
The punks who damaged each of these monuments probably don't know who either Marti or Davis were. Just someone's kids who are allowed to run wild in the neighborhood. The police are not likely to even look for these punks. This in is the backyard of the BPD Headquarters, yet there has obviously been no police action to find these young terrorists.
I really do not understand why of all people would someone vandalize a Jose Marti historical monument. Jose Marti a democratic revolutionary that believed in free speech and was anti-slavery, a poet, novelist and intellectual, he was anti racist and tried to bring the blacks and Hispanics together in Cuba which was a huge problem in his time. I hope that the vandals are found and for punishment forced to do a book report on Jose Marti. I don't approve of the vandalizing of the Jefferson Davis monument either, but it is easier to see that some people may object to it.
It's weird that you see kids idolizing Che Guevara, who was the complete opposite of Jose Marti politically; I wonder if a monument of Che would receive the same treatment as the Jose Marti monument.
What the hell are the cubans doing here they all promised to go back to cuba when fidel fideo was no longer there. What are you waiting for?
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