José Martí’s Liberative Political Theology , livre ebook

José Martí’s Liberative Political Theology
José Martí’s Liberative Political Theology
MIGUEL A. DE LA TORRE
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright 2021 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First printing 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: De La Torre, Miguel A., author.
Title: José Martí’s liberative political theology / Miguel A. De La Torre.
Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020055787 (print) | LCCN 2020055788 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826501684 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780826501677 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826501691 (epub) | ISBN 9780826501707 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Martí, José, 1853-1895—Political and social views. | Martí, José, 1853-1895—Views on religion. | Nationalism—Cuba. | Liberation theology.
Classification: LCC F1783.M38 D37 2021 (print) | LCC F1783.M38 (ebook) | DDC 972.91/05092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055787
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055788
To my parents, Mirta y Miguel—may they rest in peace so far from the land that witnessed their birth
CONTENTS
Preface
Notes on Translation
INTRODUCTION
ONE: A Catholic Spiritual Foundation
TWO: Apostle to a New Religion
THREE: Pluralist Spiritual Foundation
FOUR: Precursor to Liberation Theology
FIVE: Theological Assumptions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The problem of independence [is] not a change of form, but a change of spirit.
JOSÉ MARTÍ
PREFACE
JOSÉ MARTÍ NEEDS little introduction really in the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the United States. Ironically, not many Euro-Americans are cognizant of his writings, even though he is among the first responsible for introducing the Américas to the everyday idiosyncrasies of U.S. life, shaping the ideas and attitudes of América Latina of the late nineteenth century toward her northern neighbor. He lived a life of incarceration, deportation, expatriation, and migration—he was a figure who did not belong exclusively to Cubans or solely to Latinoamérica. Because his writings were among the first in the Western Hemisphere to capture the dream of a postcolonial existence, he is among the few in history who philosophically transcended regional and national borders, thus belonging to all of humanity. Martí was among that breed of writer-activists who attempted to create patria through a lifelong dedication to praxis. And yet few within the nation where he spent the last fifteen years of his life are familiar with his intellectual contributions.
Decades before European philosophers began recognizing a postcolonial discourse, Martí was already developing his own form of modernismo that attempted to move beyond the Eurocentric modernity of his time, even though he still relied on modernist concepts like liberation and the importance of rational thought. Before postcolonial ism became fashionable among Eurocentric intellectuals, Martí was among the first colonized persons to create a space in his writings for a worldview apart and separate from the declining Spanish colonizer and the emerging U.S. empire, a space apart and separate from the Eurocentric way of thinking that normalized, legitimized, and justified their place in the world.
For the Cuban theologian Reinerio Arce, the development of Cuban theological and philosophical reflection cannot be located within European systematics. Instead, it is developed in Cuban literature, in Cuban music, in Cuban art, in Cuban political discussions, in Cuban cultural manifestations, and in Cuban national symbols. 1 An examination of Martí’s political theology is crucial because this revolutionary figure, venerated as “the apostle of Cuba,” serves as the primary symbol, a cultural manifestation that communicates a moral way of being capable of shaping a political vision for the future. No other Cuban writer or political leader, before or since, skillfully blended the religious, scientific, and artistic views of América Latina, Africa, Asia, and Europe to create an image of patria that can encompass the multidimensional aspects of a complex and diverse Cuban people. Hence, it is not surprising Martí constitutes a common sacred space shared by all Cubans, regardless of religious or political views—or lack thereof.
According to Mircea Eliade, anything profane (a river, stone, star, animal, human being) can be transformed into something sacred, a marker pointing to something greater than itself. 2 The radically religious, whether prophets, apostles, or el apóstol himself, are not the only supreme forms of expression. Anything can reveal aspects of the Divine. Cubans, as all other finite beings, struggle to construct the concept of an infinite God; therefore, symbols become the means by which they access aspects of the Divine created in the image of humans. As such, Martí represents more than a set of political symbols inducing symbolic behaviors; he is a sacred space, even though all too often a kerygmatic Martí is created who does not coincide with the historical Martí.
Martí is significant to our research today because he serves as an important and potent symbol of Cuban identity—regardless of whether his works are known, studied, or faithfully adhered to by self-proclaimed disciples. Scholars of semiotics, such as Paul Tillich, proposed that symbols are fastened to reality, becoming the only way people are able to grasp the metaphysical. Because of the metaphysical transcendent nature and the existential dilemma of humanity, any and every expression of otherworldliness can be made only through symbolic words, actions, objects, images, and ideas. Unlike a sign pointing solely to the Divine, the symbol incorporates the people’s attempt to grasp the Absolute while creating the space for an encounter with the Divine. Tillich lists at least four characteristics of symbols: the symbol points beyond itself toward the Divine; symbols proactively engage in the praxis of what they point toward; they “unlock” aspects of the Divine otherwise hidden; and they reveal a greater depth of human reality. 3 For our purposes, Tillich’s understanding of the significance of symbols is useful as we explore the importance of Martí not only as symbol but as what, as symbol himself, he signifies.
Like some unknown and unknowable deity, Martí has become one of the most powerful examples of a Cuban symbol for transcendence. He stands among the most used symbols, communicating to all Cubans a hope in establishing a just society. And yet, this symbol of transcendence has successfully been confined in an ideological straitjacket so as to tame his words, which are then manipulated by those seeking power and privilege or by those opposing them. The anthropologist João Felipe Gonçalves argues that Martí as myth “functions in national communities as totem do in certain ‘primitive’ societies. They provide a material symbol to a group’s cohesiveness and thus help in the very constitution of the group they represent. Both totems and national heroes help to create the group they represent.” 4 As such, Martí the symbol reinforces whichever hierarchy masks itself as the legitimate heir of el apóstol .
But in spite of this abusive use of Martí as symbol, he still can be utilized as a crucial Cuban marker. The mythification of Martí, as the historian Lillian Guerra argues, was inextricably linked to the process of nation building, which explains how different interpretations of his works represent conflicting interpretations of nation. 5 This book argues that as a Cuban symbol, Martí provides more than just a model for political development; he is also a model for living a moral, ethical life indigenous to the Cuban context. Although not divine (in spite of some of the apotheosized biographies written about him), he nonetheless points to a moral theology allowing Cubans, and all other seekers of liberation, to tackle the wider political world from their own social location.
Unfortunately, many have overlooked his theological grounding in favor of emphasizing his poetics or spiritualities (as if anyone could ever truly understand the spirituality of another human being). And although much has also been written concerning his political world-view, little attention has been given to the moral and ethical theological underpinnings of those political views—his political theology. So rather than focusing on the political or the spiritual, this book seeks to explore the moral, the ethical, and the religious aspects to Martí’s work and how those have contributed to a political theology that predates the rise of the liberation theological movement of the late 1960s in Latinoamérica.
The book you hold in your hands took me a lifetime to write. Only now, after six decades since my birth, living in exile, can I look back six decades before my birth to attempt an understanding of why I, like my intellectual mentor José Martí, have lived in what he called in an 1894 letter to a childhood friend “the monster whose entrails I know, my slingshot is the one of David.” 6 As a child growing up in the exilic Cuban community, I lived in the shadow of the Cuban apostle, embracing a figure who was a metaphysical apotheosis. Even though he authored a trove of publications, Martí was someone to venerate, not rigorously investigate. My commitment to approach my hero with the eyes of a critical scholar is the most respectful manner by which I can move from fawning rhetoric to intellectual appreciation. Regardless of the years spent to bring this particular volume to fruition, I confess nevertheless that I publish this book with a certain degree of trepidation.
Attempting to master Martí’s works is as ambitious as attempting to master the Talmud. Just as multiple conflicting interpretations arise from sacred text, so too, in spite of his call for unity, are there multiple elucidations of his words. An