JOSÉ MARTÍ: NUEVAS CARTAS DE NUEVA YORK

The publication in 1946 of José Martí’s Cartas a Manuel A. Mercado (University of Mexico) brought to light the existence of articles written by Martí for the Mexican daily, El Partido Liberal, that had not been included in his collected works. The first indication that an abundance of material was probably waiting there to be gleaned was Martí’s letter dated May 15, 1886, in which he told Mercado that he was forwarding the first “correspondence” for the Partido Liberal. If the articles began that early, surely there were many as yet uncollected, since only two chronicles published in that paper prior to February 14, 1887, were to be found in Martí’s Complete Works. Now this new volume, José Martí; Nuevas Cartas de Nueva York (México: Siglo XXI, 1980) by Ernesto Mejía Sánchez, of his writings brings to eleven the number published in the Partido Liberal in just those nine months.

There were other clues to the existence of forgotten pieces in the Partido Liberal. Francisco Monterde, the editor of that important epistolary published in 1946, referred by date to two articles on the “Cutting case” that the reader of Martí’s collected works would have sought in vain. That reader could expect to find only the pieces Martí himself had managed to collect, and we know from repeated complaints in his letters that the Partido Liberal often failed to send him copies of the issues in which his articles appeared. Thus, a methodical search of the Mexican newspaper was necessary, and it had to be done in Mexico, for the only known collections of El Partido Liberal are there.

In Nuevas cartas de Nueva York, Professor Mejía Sánchez has gathered the fruits of his research in the Partido Liberal: thirty-one articles, which may not be all there is to find and which include several attributions. Numbers XV and XX (both unsigned), may have been forwarded by Martí from New York for someone else, but are certainly not in his style. Number XXII probably is not Martí’s, although it is signed “El Amigo”, a pseudonym used in connection with articles he did write. Professor Mejía Sánchez himself has wisely relegated Number XXXI (unsigned, and about a ball in Washington) to the Appendix, noting: “Martí’s hand can be found in this and other similar chronicles, but they cannot properly be attributed in their entirety to him.”

The reader will not find Martí’s views on important, fresh subjects in this volume. The rescued articles do however, afford fresh perspectives and opinions on familiar subjects, e.g., Henry George and the social problems of his times, the journalist A. K. Cutting and his role in quarrels between the U.S. and Mexico, the anarchist movement, labor and immigration problems, education, American women, and sports.

We knew that, on occasion, Martí would send the same or similar articles to El Partido Liberal and the Buenos Aires paper La Nación, for which he acted as U.S. correspondent during the same period; however, his creative capacity was such that he generally wrote on different topics for the two papers. With these new pages we can see that the creative wellsprings were even deeper than we could have suspected. For instance, we were aware that in October 1886 Martí wrote a chronicle on “The Autumn Elections” for La Nación, as well as his admirable and lengthy piece on “The Celebrations at the Statue of Liberty.” To that astonishing production we must now add three excellent articles on Various subjects written for El Partido Liberal. The  total in 26 days: more than 50 printed pages, almost 30,000 words of the richest prose written in the Spanish language in the nineteenth century .

Perhaps the most outstanding of the chronicles included in Nuevas Cartas is Number VII, an analysis of American society. The severe scrutiny to which freedom is subjected in this “correspondence” is without parallel in Martí’s works:   

La libertad politica no ha podido servir de consuelo a los que no ven beneficio alguno inmediato en ejercerla . . . [N]o basta a hacer a los hombres felices [puesto] que hay un vicio de esencia en el sistema que con los elementos más favorables de libertad, población, tierra y trabajo, trae a los que viven en él a un estado de odio y desconfianza constante y creciente, y a la vez que permite la acurnulacidn ilimitada en unas cuantas manos de la riqueza de carácter púiblico, priva a la mayoría trabajadora de las condiciones de salud, fortuna y sosiego indispensables para sobrellevar la vida. Ése es en los Estados Unidos el mal nacional. . .

This penetrating comment on the country’s social problems leads to the following questions and conclusions:

¿Será la libertad inutil? ¿No hay virtud de paz, fuerza de amor, adelanto del hombre en la libertad? ¿Produce la libertad los mismos resultados que el despotismo?… El hábito del éxito y la afirmación de la persona que vienen del ejercicio constante de la libertad política, no bastan a impedir las desigualdades consiguientes a una organización social imperfecta, pero suavizan dentro de ella los espíritus, crean el miramiento y respeto comunes, inspiran repulsión a la violencia innecesaria, y proporcionan los medios precisos para proponer y conseguir en paz las pruebas y cambios que allí donde no hay libertad política efectiva sólo obtienen a medias la cólera y la sangre… [y aquélla] acción acordada y pacífica que ha de acabar porque cada boca tenga un pan, y cada viejo ahorre para el fin de su vida una camisa limpia y una almohada blanda..

Nuevas Cartas is a most valuable contribution and should quickly find a place in the Obras Completas published in Havana by Editorial Nacional de Cuba, which has zealously collected new material as it appears. Undoubtedly it will be incorporated with due credit to Professor Mejía Sánchez, who, through oversight, mistakenly complains of failure to credit him in the 1960s with discovery of two chronicles (“Un libro del Norte” and “Un gran pianista”) that in fact had been included in a 1946 edition of Martí’s complete works (Editorial Trópico, vol. 69, pp. 179 & 187). In Cuba due recognition for discovery of Martí’s works is only denied to those who do not enjoy favor with the regime; their contributions are copied and reproduced in silence by the state-owned press. Professor Mejía Sánchez need not fear such ignoble treatment, for his research was done in collaboration with the Cuban authorities, who have already published the Introduction and index to this volume (Anuario Martiano, 1977) with proper acknowledgment.