Volume 35, Number 12 · July 21, 1988
A Revolutionary Hero
By Raymond Carr
Inside the Monster: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism
by José Martí, translated by Elinor Randall
Monthly Review Press, 386 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Our America: Writings on Latin America and the Struggle for Cuban Independence
by José Martí, translated by Elinor Randall
Monthly Review Press, 448 pp., $7.50 (paper)
On Art and Literature: Critical Writings
by José Martí, translated by Elinor Randall
Monthly Review Press, 348 pp., $10.00 (paper)
Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement of July 26 was created out of hatred and love: hatred of Batista the Tyrant and love of Martí the Apostle. When I spent some time in Cuba in the early Sixties the revolution still seemed inspired by Martí. Martí was everywhere: there were quotations from José Martí on the back of bus tickets, exhibitions with locks of his hair and samples of the ground he had trod. Plaster busts and pictures of Martí were not then accompanied in shop windows by portraits of Marx and Lenin. When the Soviet astronaut Yurí Gagarin visited Cuba his first official act was to lay a wreath on the Martí monument. The lines of the poet Nicolás Guillén still seemed to contain the essence of the revolution:
Review, 3292 words
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