Remembering José Martí and his legacy on his 173rd birth anniversary both in Cuba and in exile

 "Freedom can not be fruitful for the peoples who have their forehead stained in blood." - José Martí*

José Martí, 28 January 1853 – 19 May 1895

 
He re-launched an independence struggle, but he did so without inciting hatred or dehumanizing his opponents. He was a fervent supporter of civil liberties, particularly the freedom of thought and expression. 

Additionally, he worked as a journalist and poet, having previously been imprisoned by the Spanish monarchy for his political views. 

 On this day in 1853 José Julián Martí Pérez was born.
 
Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideas?

Not the Cuban dictatorship.

Falsifying Martí 

Sadly, the Castro brothers over the past 67 years has been misrepresenting his writings with the assistance of international institutions such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They have re-written the real Jose Marti in an Orwellian fashion to advance their totalitarian narrative.

This is not unique to the Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba but a common practice among other totalitarian regimes to legitimize their rule.

Carlos Ripoll, an expert on the life and thought of Jose Marti in 1994 wrote in the journal Cuban Studies published by the University of Pittsburgh Press the article titled, "The Falsification of José Martí in Cuba" and provided an abstract of his argument:

"Marxist-Leninist governments have traditionally falsified history to justify their rise to power and the political systems they have imposed. In response to the worldwide collapse of Communism, Cuban authorities have intensified their adulteration of history so as to offer a nationalistic rationale for their continuation in power. The highest exponent of the revolutionary tradition in Cuba is José Marti and, therefore, the falsification of his thought and doctrines is the first priority of many historians and critics. They concentrate, in particular, on the Cuban Revolutionary party founded by Marti, which they misrepresent as a forerunner of the Cuban Communist party, the basic institution that holds the monopoly of power and consequently is responsible for all the misfortunes and injustices that afflict the country. This study shows some of the forms this falsification takes in Cuba, its objectives, and attempts to disprove the inconsistent and false arguments of those who purport to find similarities or coincidences between the free, democratic republic that Marti wished for his country and the totalitarian state there in existence." 

In a letter in 1988 to The New York Review of Books, Professor Ripoll revealed how José Martí in a letter to his friend, Valdes Dominguez, written just a year before Martí’s death, criticized the “arrogance and hidden rage” of “socialist ideology” whose adherents, “in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless.”

Seven months after the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Cuban independence leader, in 1953, a failed armed attack on the Moncada barracks by Fidel Castro and a group of revolutionaries, led the future Cuban dictator,  during his trial to declare José Martí the "intellectual author" of the attack.

Castro was lying.

In 1972, the Cuban dictatorship created the "Order of Jose Marti" and over the next  54 years awarded it to dictators and war criminals such as: Alexander Lukashenko, Jiang Zemin, Xi Jinping, Kim Il-sung, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Hugo Chávez, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Robert Mugabe, Erich Honecker, Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, and Nicolas Maduro.

 

The modern counterparts of Martí 

There is a movement in Cuba that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means. 

There are courageous Cubans who risk everything standing up to dictatorship and some of them have been assassinated in the process and their families targeted for reprisals, and forced into exile.

They embrace the principle expressed by José Martí that "There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart." 

Following this statement to its logical conclusion leads us over a century later to new generations carrying on his legacy.

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’" - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, December 17, 2002

"Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves." -  Harold Cepero Escalante, November 3, 2002  

In their writings and in their lives, Oswaldo and Harold exemplified the best qualities of José Martí, rejecting hatred and continuing to defy injustice while pursuing liberation and national reconciliation. 

Cuban Martyrs: Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante,

 Oswaldo and Harold were leaders in the Christian Liberation Movement. They sought freedom for their fellow Cubans.

One of their most important efforts was the Varela  Project. 

The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign and yet the dictatorship's response to a nonviolent citizen's initiative was to first coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable and quickly passed it through the rubber stamp legislature without debating the Varela Project, which according to the Cuban law drafted by the dictatorship meant that it should have been debated by the National Assembly. 

 

The Economist in its December 14, 2005 issue published a conversation with Oswaldo Paya titled "An unsilenced voice for change" that outlined what the Christian Liberation Movement had accomplished.

Between 2001 and 2004, Mr Payá's movement gathered 25,000 signatures in a vain attempt to persuade Cuba's National Assembly to change the constitution to allow multi-party democracy. Activists of his Christian Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of the 75 dissidents and journalists rounded up and jailed for long terms in April 2003. [...] Spain is “complaisant” with Mr Castro's regime, Mr Payá says. “We need a campaign of support and solidarity with peaceful change in Cuba” of the kind that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

 Oswaldo and Harold were assassinated by Cuban government agents on July 22, 2012.

Today in Cuba over a thousand Cubans are jailed for calling for freedom, and an end to dictatorship. 

This tradition also exists in exile, and was best reflected by Brothers to the Rescue.

How and why Brothers to the Rescue formed
In February of 1991 news accounts of the death by dehydration of 15-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, a rafter fleeing Cuba, as U.S. Coast Guard officials tried to save his life shocked the moral imagination of several pilots. 

This was not an isolated event. Academics Holly Ackerman and Juan Clark, in the 1995 monograph The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty reported that “as many as 100,000 Cuban rafters may have perished trying to leave Cuba.” Anecdotal evidence documents that some of them were victims of the Cuban border patrol using sand bags and snipers against defenseless rafters.

Gregorio Perez Ricardo

It was within this context that on May 13, 1991 Brothers to the Rescue was founded with the aim of searching for rafters in the Florida Straits, getting them water, food, and rescued. In December of 1993 Brothers to the Rescue inaugurated their permanent hangar naming it after Gregorio.

Brothers to the Rescue by November of 1995 was collaborating with the Florida Martin Luther King Institute for Non-violence and took part in the King Day parade in 1996. On February 8, 1996 The Miami Times reported “that this group has come around to the belief that change can be brought about in Cuba in the same way that it was brought about by Dr. King in the United States.” The Miami Times concluded in the editorial “Spreading King’s Message” that “In throwing Dr. King's principle into the volatile mix of Cuban exile politics, Brothers to the Rescue is showing a willingness to be creative.” 

Brothers to the Rescue logo

 

They risked their lives in the Florida Straits to rescue Cuban rafters and at the same time Brothers to the Rescue challenged the Cuban exile community to abandon both the failed violent resistance and appeasement approaches in order to embrace strategic nonviolence.  This path followed the way of Martin Luther King Jr. with both civil disobedience and a constructive program. What was the end result? Brothers to the Rescue saved more than 4,200 men, women, and children ranging from a five-day old infant to a 79 year old man, and rescued thousands more during the 1994 refugee crisis.

One year after the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre in which 37 men, women and children were killed Cuban exiles organized a flotilla to travel in a civic non-violent manner to the spot six miles off the Havana coastline where the "13 de Marzo" tugboat had been attacked and sunk to hold a religious service for the victims. The Brothers to the Rescue overflight of Havana, where they dropped bumper stickers in Spanish that read "Comrades No. Brothers" was in response to Cuban gunboats ramming the lead boat of the flotilla.

Brothers to the Rescue also served as a bridge between a nonviolent civic movement inside of Cuba and an exile community seeking a different approach. Cuban dissidents announced on October 10, 1995 the intention to hold a national gathering of the opposition in Cuba on February 24, 1996. The coalition of over a 160 groups named themselves the Cuban Council. Brothers to the Rescue in an open and transparent manner sent $2,000 of privately raised assistance to this coalition on February 13, 1996. In the days leading up to February 24 over a 180 dissidents were imprisoned in a nationwide crackdown. 

 

Coretta Scott King and Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue

 

They risked their lives to serve a great idea, and paid the ultimate price thirty years ago on February 24, 1996.

 

 

On February 24, 1996 at 3:21pm and 3:27pm two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down by two Cuban MiGs over international airspace killing four. Two more MIG’s chased a third plane to within three minutes of downtown Key West, but that plane made it back and provided critical information on what had occurred.

 

  

The four men who were killed represented all aspects of the Cuban diaspora: Armando Alejandre Jr, a child who arrived with his parents from Cuba in 1960, Carlos Costa, born in Miami Beach in 1966 and Mario Manuel de la Peña, born in New Jersey in 1971 the children of Cuban exiles. Pablo Morales was born in Cuba in 1966, raised there and was saved by Brothers to the Rescue when he was 26 years old while fleeing the island on a raft. Two were from Havana, one was from New Jersey and the other from Miami Beach. 

These four men, and many other members of Brothers to the Rescue who volunteered their time to save lives, were living out the values and example of Jose Marti in exile. 

"Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life, observed Marti." 

 They, both inside and outside of Cuba, are the direct heirs of José Martí. Let us continue to honor and remember them, and Cuba's apostle in campaigning for their freedom, and for the liberation of Cuba from the present communist dictatorship.

*"La libertad no puede ser fecunda para los pueblos que tienen la frente manchada de sangre." - Jose Marti