CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

With all and for the well-being of all

By José Martí

“Cubans: To the long-suffering Cuba, my first words. Cuba is to be placed on an altar, to offer it our life, instead of using it as a pedestal so that we may rise upon it. And now, after having evoked its most beloved name, I shall spill the tenderness of my soul over these generous hands which come to me -certainly not at an uncustomary time- to provide it with the strength it needs to endure the agony of the edification process; now, with our eyes looking way above our heads, and my entire heart drawn out of myself, I shall not give my selfish thanks to those who believe having found in me the virtues they wish to see in me as well as in every other Cuban. Neither to the kind Carbonell nor to the courageous Rivero shall I give thanks for the magnificent hospitality in their words, or the blaze of their generous affection. I shall give to them, however, all the thanks from my soul, and through them, to whomever is involved with the task of founding; for the sake of this loving people they have raised right in front of the covetous master who lies in wait and divides us; this people full of virtues, where the free strength of our industrious homeland is put to the test; this educated people who combine their thinking with the earning of their daily bread, and the thunderous speeches of Mirabeau with the arts of Roland, enough a response to the disdainful of this world; for the sake of this temple, garlanded with heroes that has been built upon hearts. I embrace all those who know how to love. I have come, bringing the star and the dove within my heart.
We have not gathered here forcefully or reluctantly out of systematic respect for an idea that cannot be abjured without dishonor; we have not been convened here as a result of the ever-ready, and sometimes far too ready response given by the patriotic hearts to the request of those longing for fame or gone wild with power; or the hero who does not crown the untimely eagerness to die with the superior heroism of suppressing it; or the needy who outstretches his alms-begging hand from under the cloak of the homeland. Outsiders will never be spoiled with flattery; nor would this noble people who may receive them will ever be a people of servile and easily led individuals. My chest swells with pride, and as from now I love my homeland even more, and believe even more in its orderly and serene future, redeemed from the grave danger of following blindly and in the name of liberty the steps of those who avail themselves of their longing for it to reroute it to their own advantage. I believe even more in a republic with wide-open eyes that is neither foolish nor timid -neither in judges’ robes nor deprived from every authority; neither over-educated nor uneducated- ever since I saw, by the sacred urgings of the heart, all Cubans gathered together on this evening of strength and reflection, now and forever, for as long as patriotism prevails, expressing their honest and free opinions over and above anything else, as well as a Cuban who respects them.

For, when it comes to my homeland, if I were granted the possibility to express my preference for any specific asset over all of the rest, one single basic asset out of all inherent to the country, that could be a pillar as much as a principle, and without which all the other assets would be fallacious and insecure, this will be the asset I would prefer: I want the fundamental law of our Republic to be the tribute of all Cubans to the full dignity of man. Every true man must feel on his own cheek the blow that falls on the cheek of any other man: the habit of resorting to private cliques, fostered by obvious or hidden interests, to defend man’s liberties is degrading to any people from the time they are born. Bring the truth to shine so that it inflames our souls and vibrates like thunder; and let every honorable man follow it in freedom. Let this sensitive consideration, this virile tribute Cubans pay to each other, prevail over all other things. There should be no mysteries, defamations, or eagerness to discredit; nor any long and crafty preparations for the nefarious day of ambitions. The Republic is either based on the comprehensive character of each and every one of its children, their habit of working with their own hands and thinking by themselves, their own comprehensive endeavor –as if it were a matter of family honor- and the respect for the comprehensive endeavor of others, and, ultimately, the passion towards men’s dignity, or it will not be worth a single tear from our women or a single drop of blood from our courageous men.

We work for truths, and not for dreams. We work to free the Cubans, and not to fence them in. We work to harmonize the interests and rights of the loyal inhabitants of Cuba in peace and equity, and not to replicate, on the very threshold of the continent and of the Republic, the scary dictatorship of Veintimilla, or the bloody estate of Rosas, or the lugubrious Paraguay of Francia! We would rather fall pray of the excesses of the imperfect character of our compatriots than take advantage of the credit acquired with the weapons of war or words, or diminish their character! This is the only merit I see in these affections, which have come in due time to strengthen my untiring hands to the service of true freedom. Let those for whom I would wish to do more, bite them, and I am not telling any lie! I will love that bite because it would come from the fury of my own land, and because I will be able to see through it a brave and rebellious Cuban heart! Let us unite, above all, in this faith! Let us join hands, as a pledge of that determination, so that everybody could see them, and where forgetfulness does not escape punishment; let us reject any republic that is not built by means worthy of man’s dignity, for the wellbeing and the prosperity of all Cubans! All Cubans!

I do not know what is the mysterious tenderness about this extremely sweet word, or what pure taste it has that outshines that of the very word of man, which is already so beautiful; a word that, when pronounced as it should, looks like the air turned into a golden nimbus, and nature becomes a throne or a mountain’s summit! We say “Cuban”, and a sweetness like gentle brotherhood wafts through our entrails, and our savings box opens up on its own, and we tighten our belts to make another place at the table, and the loving heart grows wings to succor those who were born in the same land as we were, even if they are disturbed by sins, or misled by ignorance, or infuriated by rage or soaked in blood by crime! It feels as if some divine arms, invisible to the eyes, enfold us all upon a chest where blood still flows, and the sobbing of the heart can still be heard! Let us all create there in our homeland -so that we could all be engaged in the work of mercy where the corrupted master rots all he looks at- a new Cuban soul, bristled and hostile; a surly soul, different from that home-loving and magnanimous soul of our forefathers, a natural child of the misery that sees the unpunished vice triumph, and of the useless culture which only finds employ in the dull contemplation of its own self!. Here, where we stand on guard for those who are absent, where we again build up the house which is falling apart on ourselves there, where we are creating that which will replace what is being destroyed there, there are no words which more closely resemble the sunlight at dawn, nor consolation that enters our hearts with greater happiness than this ineffable and impassioned word which is “Cuban”!

Because that is what this city is all about; that is what the whole Cuban emigration is all about; that is what we have been doing during all these years of working without being able to save, of sharing with family without pleasure, of living without feeling the taste of life, of feigned death! To the homeland that is falling apart over there and has become blind with rottenness, we must take the pious and farsighted homeland which is being raised up here! To whatever remains from the homeland over there, riddled with the gangrene that has begun to eat away the heart, we must attach the friendly homeland where we have gone to. Here, in solitude, we try to adapt our souls, with the firm hands that good love require, to all the outside and inside realities -so well veiled there by some out of despair and by others out of their own taste for Babylonian delights- that regardless of their being great certainties or great hopes or great risks, they are, even for experts, practically unknown! For, what is known over there about this glorious night of resurrection, the unwavering and methodical faith of our spirits, the continued and growing rapprochement by Cubans abroad that those ten years of errors, Cuba’s natural whims and other malevolent causes have not been able to definitely break up, but rather put together in such an intimate and loving way that all we can see is an eagle that is soaring up and a sun that is rising, and an army that moves forward?

What is known over there about these subtle covenants, which no one can draft or hold back, between the desperate country and the awaiting emigrants? What do they know about our character, which has been fortified, after traveling from one land to another, by this cruel test and our daily work? What do they know about the liberal, fierce and working people that we are going to bring back to them? What do those who are agonizing through the night know about those who await them with open arms under the dawn’s light? Any longshoreman could load a boat; any artilleryman could set off a cannon; but those minor tasks, aimed at sheer results or based on opportunity, have not been the only tasks falling under our duties, but also that of avoiding the harmful consequences -and accelerating the pleasant ones- from the approaching and inevitable war – and saving it, as expected from every human, from the estrangement, carelessness and jealousy that might take it where, needlessly an inexcusably, the former was taken- and disciplining our free souls in the knowledge and order of the real elements of our country, and in the work which is the air and the sun of freedom, so that there is room in it, without any risk, together with the creative forces of a new situation, for the inevitable remnants of the turbulent crises required by such forces. Our hands will hurt once again in that lofty endeavor, but our dead are commanding us, and advising us, and looking after us, and the living are listening and obeying them; and the sound of aides carrying orders, and of flags being flown is being heard in the wind! Let us unite, Cubans, with all and for all, in this other faith, which is the inevitable war, so that it is respected, desired and assisted by the homeland, and it is not killed in it blossoms by the enemy for its being local, or personal or incomplete: a revolution of justice and reality, for the recognition and open practice of true freedoms.

Neither will the brave men of the war who listening to me be at peace with these detailed analyses of public matters, for the enthusiast will find the very delay in the logic of building enthusiasm to be a crime; nor have our women, who are attentively listening here, stopped dreaming about going back to set foot on their own land, where their spouses will no longer live in gloom and in bitterness as they live in here; nor will children, who have been brethrens, sons or daughters of our martyrs and heroes, and have nourished themselves with their legends, think of anything other than the beauty of dying on a horse ride, fighting for the country, at the foot of a palm tree!

…That is my dream, as much as it is the dream of all; palm trees are like brides waiting in, and we must raise justice as high as the palm trees grow! That is what we wanted to say. The war that started it all, which fell into disarray, must be succeeded, due to the persistence of public ills, by the necessary war that would be weak and lacking any possibility of success if it is not invigorated by that intelligent and strong love for what is right, upon which the most anxious souls pick up from the grave the flag that was dropped by those least in need of justice who succumbed to the exhaustion of the first effort. Cubans seek in their independence their rights as men; and independence must be sought with man's entire soul. Cuba, faced with desolation, is turning its eyes on us! Children are exercising the strength of their new arms on the trees that stand alongside the roads, and wars break out whenever there is cause, either out of the impatience of a valiant man or from a grain of corn! The Cuban soul is lining up and the blurred image of the masses, as the break of day, can already be seen; and the enemy, less surprised today and less self-interested, does not have on those lands the wealth it was to defend in the past; nor should we be as distracted as we were by local gossiping or rivalries over commanding positions, provincial jealousies or crazy hopes! Because we, who are abroad, have love in our hearts; our eyes are set on the coastline, our hand on the Americas and our guns on our belts! Who could not read all that in the air, written with letters of light? And in letters of light it shall be read that, in this new sacrifice, we do not look for a mere formality or a perpetuation of the colonial spirit of our lives with the novelty of a Yankee uniform, but rather the essence and reality of a republican country of our own, without the feeble fears by some to the wholesome expression of all ideas and the honest employ of all energies, - and without that sort of theft against man by others, which consists of intending to rule in the name of liberty by resorting to violent methods which dispense with the rights of all others to the guarantees and methods that liberty grants. Obviously, the political fops who forget how necessary it is to count on that which cannot be left out, will back off - and the rice powder jingoism will grumble under the excuse that peoples, while slogging away in their creation, do not always smell of pinks. And what are we supposed to do? Without the worms that produce soil, the magnificent palaces could not be built!

One has to go into the truth with one’s sleeves rolled up to the elbow, as butchers make themselves through the cattle. Everything that is true is sacred, even when it doesn’t smell of pinks. There is a foul and bloody entrails to everything; the gold on which artists sculpt their wonderful jewellery is first mud in the troughs; the fruit wrests it syrup and the flower its colors from life's fetid odors; men are born from the pain and the darkness of the maternal womb, and from the sublime scream and torn skin. The magnificent forces and plumes of fire that mix with each other and rise from the furnace of the sun are nothing but spots to the human eye when looked from afar! Let us make way for those who do not fear the light! May our charity go to those shivering at its rays!

And I wouldn’t be able to see that flag with love –aware as I am that the most sacred things are taken as instruments of interest by the audacious winners in this world- if I would not believe that the whole freedom would come within its folds, when the cordial recognition of every Cuban, and of the equitable ways of settling the conflicts emanating from their interests, prove wrong those who would advise confusing methods, which are as terrible as the unwavering passion that refuses to recognize whatever is equitable and fair in their demands. Let the tongue of the popular sycophant be nailed and hanged in the air like a pennant of ignominy, in a place where it may serve as punishment to those who advance their ambitions by spurring in vain the anguish of those who are forced to endure them, or hide from them the essential truths of their problems, or incite their rage; and side by side the sycophant’s tongue, let the tongues of those who deny justice be nailed as well!

The sycophant’s tongue should be nailed in a place for all to see - and so should the tongues of those who take as an excuse the exaggerations that ignorance is entitled to -for those who do not resort to every measure to do away with ignorance can not erect themselves as accusers- in order not to abide by all that there is of man’s pain and sacred agony in such exaggerations which are easier to excommunicate, wearing robes and cap, than to study with a weeping heart and the human pain right up to the elbows! The judges of life need to be sent into the prison of life, so that they may learn about justice. He who may pass judgment on everything should know everything. Those from above should not make hasty or biased judgments. Those from below should not make biased or hasty judgments. The jealous should not censor the wellbeing that is envied in secret. The powerful should not ignore the heartrending poem and the harsh sacrifices of those who must earn the bread they eat, their long-suffering spouses, crowned with a crown that is invisible to the unjust, and their children who do not have what other children of the world have! That flag would rather not be unfurled away from its mast if not to equally protect everyone!

Very poor knowledge of our homeland or no knowledge at all have those who do knot know that there is in it a sort of spirit of the present and a guarantee of the future, an energetic sum-up of that original freedom that man cultivates within itself, the sap of the earth and the hardships he sees, his own thoughts and his proud nature. Flesh and blood politicians should rather count more on the real and vigorous freedom which might only lack the culture that could be easily put onto it, than on the amateurs’ freedom that paper politicians are taught about in the French and English catechisms. Men we are, and we will not accept cutout governments, but only the work that comes from our heads and is cast in our country’s mold. Very poor knowledge about our country have those who cannot see the way in which, vis-à-vis this native impetus that rises the country up for war and prevent it from sleeping in peace, a host of orderly forces, as humane as they are cultured, has been fostered through experience, study and a certain easy-to-understand science that exist in our beautiful land - a phalanx of accomplished intelligence, enriched by the love of man, without which intelligence is nothing but scourge and crime; a very intimate harmony, emanating from common pain, between the Cubans of natural rights, without history or books, and the Cubans who have poured into study the passion they couldn’t pour into the making of a new homeland; a brotherhood so ardent between the very few slaves of life and the slaves of an annihilating tyranny- that, for the sake of this unanimous and consuming love of justice by men of all trades, for the sake of that equally sincere passion for humanity by those who like to wear their collars turned up, because they have tall necks, and those who don’t, because fashion tells that beautiful necks should be shown; for the sake of this vehement homeland which gathers together those with equal dreams and equal honor who might fall out with each other because of their educational differences, our Cuba , free in the harmony of equity, will grab the colonizing hand which in due time will pounce upon us, disguised with the glove of the republic. And beware, Cubans! There are gloves which are such good imitations we cannot see the difference with the human hand! Cubans, to all those who come seeking for power, we have to ask in broad light, where the hand is best seen: hand or glove? –But we cannot fear the truth, nor are we to chide. That same thing we have to fight against is necessary to us. Restraints are as necessary to a people as is whatever may push them forward. In any home the ever-active father is as necessary to the family as the usually fearful mother. There are male politics as much as there are female politics. Cold there be a locomotive with a steam engine that propels it, without breaks that could stop it on time? When it comes to nations, one hand should rest on the brakes and the other on the steam engine. And that is what afflicts peoples: either the overuse of brakes or the overuse of the steam engine.

Then, what is that we should be afraid of? The decline of our enthusiasm? The illusory nature of our faith? The small number of the indefatigable? The disarray in our hopes? Well, I look at this room and I feel the ground is steadfast and stable beneath my feet; and then I say: "They lie." And I look at my heart, which is nothing but a Cuban heart, and I say: “They lie.”

Shall we fear the habits of authority established during the war, which in a way, are anointed with the daily disdain for death? For, either I do not know what is brave about the Cuban soul, or what is wise and experienced about Cuba’s judgment, or to the extent in which the old authorities would count on the pristine authorities and that admirable concert of republican thoughts and heroic action which honor, with barely no exception, all the Cubans who wielded their arms; or rather, as I know all that, to anyone suggesting that we are to expect from our veterans that criminal love of theirs, or that postponement of the homeland for the sake of their own interests in an iniquitous betrayal of their country, I would say: - “You lie!”

Are we going to back out for fear of war tribulations, spurred by impure folk who are on the payroll of the Spanish government, or for fear of going barefoot, something that is very common now in Cuba because, including the thieves and their cronies, the only people in Cuba with shoes are the thieves and their cronies? Since I know that the same man who wrote a book with the intention of stirring up the fear of war, expressed in verse -in a very good verse, as a matter of fact- that hutias can cover all needs in Cuba’s countryside -and I know that Cuba is again full of hutias- I turn to those who intend to frighten us with the very sacrifice we all yearn for, and I tell them: “You lie”.

Shall we fear those who have suffered most in Cuba because of their being deprived of freedom, in a country where the blood they shed has made them love it too much to threaten it? Shall we fear the black man, the generous black man, our black brother who, in all Cubans who have died for him, has forever forgiven those who still mistreat him? I know of black hands which are deeper into virtue than those of any white man I know. I know of black love for sensible freedom, which differs from white Cuban’s love for freedom only in its greater, more natural and useful intensity. I know that the black man has raised his noble body and is standing as a solid pillar of all the homeland’s freedoms. Others may fear him, but I love him. And to those who may speak ill of him, or ignore him, I would straight out tell: “You lie”.

Shall we fear the Spaniards in Cuba, the armed Spaniards who were able to defeat us not because of their bravery, but because of our jealousies, and nothing more than our own jealousies? Shall we fear the Spaniards whose wealth is in Sardinero or in Rambla, and who will leave with their wealth, which is the only homeland they have? Or, shall we fear those who have their wealth in Cuba because of their attachment to the land, or the place where their children were born, and who, out of fear to be punished, or for the sake of their own children, will oppose little resistance? Shall we fear the ordinary Spaniard, who loves freedom as much as we do, and seeks with us a homeland in justice, which is loftier than being attached to an incapable and unjust homeland? Shall we fear the Spaniard who suffers, alongside his Cuban wife, the irreparable hopelessness and the miserable future of children born to him carrying the stigma of hunger and persecution, with the exile decree in his own country and a sentence to a living death with which Cubans are born to this world? Shall we fear the liberal and good Spaniard, my Valencia father, my highlander guarantor, the Gaditan who looked after my feverish sleep, the Catalonian who swore and cursed because Creoles didn’t want to flee with their clothing, the man from Malaga who carries on his back the disabled Cuban out of the hospital, the Galician who dies under the snow in a foreign country after leaving the monthly bread at the home of the general-in-chief of Cuba’s war? In Cuba we are fighting for the freedom of man, and there are many Spaniards who love freedom! These Spaniards will be attacked by others: and I shall protect them all my life! To those who do not know that those Spaniards are just like many other Cubans, we tell: “You lie!”

Shall we fear the foreign snow? Those who know not how to struggle with their own hands in life, or measure the hearts of others by their own easily frightened hearts, or believe that nations are merely chess boards, or who have been raised for so long in slavery that they need someone to hold the stirrups for them so that they could get rid of it; those shall go and look in a people of strange and hostile components the republic that will only ensure well-being if it is administered according to their own nature, and in a way it is purified and enhanced. To anyone who believes that Cubans lack the bravery and the ability to live by themselves in the land created by their own courage, we say: “You lie”.

And to the sissies who disdain today this sacred revolution, whose first guides and martyrs were men born among the marble and silks of luxury -this sacred revolution which in the briefest span and by the redeeming virtue of just wars, made the heroic firstborn and the peasant with no estate, as well as the men’s masters and their slaves to become brothers-; to the paperweight Olympians who have come down from their slanderous tripod to ask in panic and with a submissive spirit whether this or that fighter has set foot on land, in order to be at peace with those who will distribute power tomorrow; to the bush robins who deliberately encourage the deception by those who believe that this magnificent movement of souls, this inflamed idea of decorous redemption, this sad and steadfast desire for the inevitable war, is nothing but the persistence of an inveterate straggler, or the wanderings of an unemployed general, or the jubilation of those who do not have the wealth that could only be maintained through complicity with dishonor -having hatred for a heart and worthless papers for brains- or the threats launched against a workers mob, that will be led, as if pulled by a halter, to wherever it might be taken by the very first ambitious person fawning on it, or the very first undercover despot whose eyes might be swept across by the flag; to the sissies, the Olympians and the bush robins we say: “You lie”. This is the workers mob, the ark of our covenant; the scabbard, embroidered by women’s hands, where Cuba’s sword has been kept; the redeeming sand where we build, and forgive, where we predict and love!

Enough! Enough of mere words! We are not here to sing praises to ourselves, but to touch our hearts, and see that they are healthy and able; to start teaching the hopeless, the absconders and the melancholic the strength of our ideas and actions, the proven virtue that future happiness will surely bring, the true nature of our own selves, which is not that of the conceited, the theoreticians, the psalmody singers, the music lovers, the daydreamers, or the beggars. We are one now, and we can make it to the end: we know what evil is and we will see to it that we do not fall back on it. Through sheer love and patience we have put together all that was left dispersed, and converted the wary confusion that followed the catastrophe into an enthusiastic order. We have procured good faith, and we believe that we have succeeded in suppressing or repressing the vices which caused our defeat and gathering together, through honest methods and for a lasting end, all the elements that were known or outlined, with whose union the imminent war can be led through victory. And now, let us fall in! By waiting over there, in the depths of our souls, we cannot found peoples! Before me I see again the ensigns flying, and giving orders; and it seems to me that the sea that is coming from over there, charged with hope and with pain, shatters the fence of the alien land where we are living, and breaks against those doors with its agitated waves…There it lies, exhausted in the arms which squeeze the life out of it and corrupt it! There it lies, wounded on its brow, wounded in its heart, presiding over -lashed to the chair of torture- the banquet where those who wear the gold-braided stripes are placing the poisoned wine on the lips of the children who have forgotten their parents! And the father dies face to face with the second-lieutenant, and the son goes, arm in arm with the second-lieutenant, to get rotten at the orgy! Enough of mere words! Let us raise, from the heart-wrenching entrails, an imperishable love for the homeland, one without which no man can live with happiness, be he good or evil. There it lies, and from there it is summoning us; we can hear it groaning, it is being raped and mocked and becoming gangrenous before our very eyes; the mother of our heart is being corrupted and dismembered! So, let us rise once and for all, with one final onslaught of our hearts; let us rise up so that freedom in victory can not be jeopardized by disorder, blunders or the impatience in its preparations; let us rise up for the true republic, we who, with our passion for what is right and with our habit of work, will know how to maintain it; let us rise up to provide our heroes - whose spirits wander, ashamed and in solitude, throughout the world- with a place where they could be laid to rest; let us rise up so that one day our children could have a place where they could be laid to rest! And let us write around the solitary star, on our new flag, this formula of triumphant love: “With all, and for the well-being of all.”

 

 

<< Back