The Castro regime and their agents of influence spent the 172nd anniversary of the birth of José Martí attempting to co-opt his legacy, but in order to do so, they needed to omit much of his writings, and who this man was. In the midst of the Cuban war of independence, Martí repeatedly defended democratic norms and issued a statement on revolutions that, in light of the Castro regime, seems prophetic today.  “A revolution is still necessary: the one that does not make its leader president, the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceful men, once soldiers, so that neither they nor anyone will ever be so again.”

Fidel Castro in a 1986 interview spoke plainly on the matter.

“There is revolutionary liberty and there are other liberties which are bourgeois. It’s difficult for me to talk about them to Europeans because bourgeois liberties were born there. In England, France, those countries. You talk of equality, liberty, fraternity. I think only our society can truly speak of equality. There’s no equality between millionaires and beggars.” … “Bourgeois liberties, no. We have two different concepts of freedom. Europeans have one, we have another. Capitalism and socialism are not at all alike. Your political concepts of liberty, equality, justice are very different from ours. You try to measure a country like Cuba with European ideas. And we do not resign ourselves to or accept being measured by those standards.”

In a 1988 interview with NBC reporter Maria Shriver he spoke equally plainly about the role of a free press under his regime.

José Martí was a practicing journalist and free speech advocate who lived many years in the United States, and was a contemporary of Karl Marx. He gave a critical assessment of the German communist philosopher when reporting on a memorial service for Karl Marx in New York City following the German author’s death on March 29, 1883.

“Karl Marx studied the methods of setting the world on new foundations, and wakened those who were asleep, and showed them how to cast down the broken props. But being in a hurry, with his understanding somewhat clouded, he did not see that children who do not have a natural, slow, and painful gestation are not born viable, whether they come from the bosom of the people in history, or from the wombs of women in the home.”

Martí also recognized the dangers of Socialism and its doctrine of envy more broadly, observing:

“Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand.”

Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter has a blog entry titled “José Julián Martí Pérez at 172: The heirs of José Martí and those who repress them now ” that explores some of the Cubans who continued to, or are continuing to live out the values of José Martí in today’s Cuba.

Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideals? 

 Castroism is the antithesis of all that José Martí represented.

Screen grab: Ventura, Valdés, Castro, and Díaz-Canel on January 27, 2025 at torchlight vigil.

The blog entry continued.

There is a movement that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means that uphold his values. These are courageous men and women who risk all standing up to the Cuban dictatorship. Many have been jailed, some have been killed, and their families targeted for reprisals in this struggle for freedom.

Looking for these values leads one to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who in a speech to the European Parliament on December 17, 2002 stated:

 “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.’”

This founder of the Christian Liberation Movement was murdered by agents of the Cuban government on July 11, 2012 together with the movement’s youth leader Harold Cepero. Like  José Martí they too are martyrs for Cuba’s freedom.

There is also an interesting reflection on the above-mentioned quote by Martí about “the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceful men, once soldiers, so that neither they nor anyone will ever be so again,” as seen through the eyes of those familiar with Mohandas Gandhi and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s accomplishments in the twentieth century.

Today also marks seven years since nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp died. He taught generations that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. Professor Sharp practiced nonviolence as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, and studied the examples of Mohandas Gandhi, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and many other nonviolent practitioners. He demonstrated that nonviolent resistance was anything but passive, and that success in a struggle required strategy as well.

Gene Sharp presented his case succinctly at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston in 1990.

“I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence.”