re-imagining the nation
TRANSCRIPT
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Re-imagining the Nation: Jos Mart and FranzFanon
Pamela Barnett PhD
In JosMarts internationalist worldview, every nation can and should contribute
to human progress. His revolutionary discourse conveys a radical optimism in
both the creative power of individuals and nations to change and develop, and in
resistance and unified struggle as means to achieve historical transformation and
genuine human progress. (In the writings of both Jos Mart and Franz Fanon, the
nature of resistance is consistent with Edward Saids suggestion, in Culture and
Imperialism, that Three great topics emerge in decolonizing cultural resistance
... One is the insistence on the right to see the communitys history whole,
coherently, integrally ... Second is the idea that resistance, far from being merely a
reaction to imperialism, is an alternative way of conceiving human history ...
Third is a noticeable pull away from separatist nationalism toward a more
integrative view of human community and human liberation (215-6).) Marts
ideas transcend his era and his region. His writings occupy a central place in the
anti-imperialist literature in the new political and economic era emerging in the
final decades of the nineteenth century. Marts radical democratic nationalism
and critical response to the global transformations of modern imperialism as
they were emerging represent the first serious challenge to Eurocentrism, register
a prescient voice against United States hegemony, and mark the beginning of
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radical nationalist revolutions in Latin America (Larsen 184-5). The military
intervention of the United States in the Cuban independence war in 1898
confirmed his prescient analysis of the United States imperialist policy toward its
neighbours. His struggle against imperialism and colonialism and his criticism of
the national bourgeoisie of neo-colonial Spanish America anticipate radical
intellectuals such as Franz Fanon, a revolutionary leader in the war that won
Algerias independence from France. Both Antillean-born, their vision and
revolutionary activism reached beyond national and regional frontiers. For Mart
(1853-1895), as for Fanon (1925-1961), humanism is the necessary foundation
and defining characteristic of the political and social consciousness required to
transform nations into independent and just societies. For both, human
development and moral progress are as important indicators of national
development as material accumulation and technological growth. Their ideas
about the nature of progress, human development, and culture are relevant to
contemporary discourses. The priorities, interests, and ideologies of dominant
economies, powerful nations, and elite sectors still create political, social, and
economic problems in their own societies and around the globe, and are now
widely acknowledged even to have placed the sustainability of our planet in
jeopardy.
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Imagining the Nation: the Latin American Writer in the 1800s
Marts discourse of identity, inclusion, and resistance is a critical voice
positioned outside the elitist discursive realm that Angel Rama calls la ciudad
letrada, which throughout the colonial period and most of the nineteenth century
was the urban-centred domain of writing closely linked to and dependent on the
state (Rama 88). Writing was the enterprise of elite intellectuals whose task it was
to articulate the ideology and edicts of the institutions of state that authorized
them. Julio Ramos states that letters occupied a central place in the organization
of the new Latin American societies (Ramos xxxvi), and the lettered city
guaranteed the close relationship between letters and politics that remained
dominant until the 1870s (Ramos 44). The letrados artificiales of Marts
Nuestra Amrica are the nineteenth-century intellectual successors of the
letrados that documented and served the interests of empire in the colonial period.
(Nuestra Amrica appeared inLa Revista Ilustrada de Nueva Yorkon 1 January
1891, and later that month, on 30 January 1891, in MexicosEl Partido Liberal. It
is included in volume 6 Marts Obras completas (OC 6: 15-23).
Roberto Fernndez Retamar has long contended, in Calibn y otros ensayos, that
a defining characteristic of Marts nuestra Amrica mestiza is the history and
culture of resistance initiated by its indigenous populations and continued
throughout the independence wars and other rebellions in the region, and
furthermore that the importance of Marts concept is in uniting indigenous,
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African and European populations in nuestra Amrica within a common identity
and a common cause.) They had the remarkable capacity, says Rama, not only
to weather the revolutionary storm and reconstitute their power in the
independent republics (Rama 45), but even to graft themselves comfortably on
to the trunk of caudillo power (51), broadening and strengthening their
foundations when urban-centred reforms in education expanded their ranks in the
areas of education, diplomacy, and journalism (57). Their institutionalized
patterns of thinking maintained the exclusion of the marginalized sectors, and
ensured that a new colonialism prevailed within the newly independent republics.
The leaders of the anti-colonial revolts had consciously adopted European
models of bourgeois revolutions, and the hegemony of European knowledge and
culture remained unbroken in the new republics (Larsen 184-5). When the leaders
and intellectuals of the new nations surveyed the cultural, political, and
geographical landscape after the devastating independence wars, like the
colonizers before them, they recognized and understood only through comparison
with European forms of knowledge and realities, which they valued and
privileged. They saw a vast empty landscape of nothingness. Their understanding
of the national and their capacity to apprehend was restricted and informed by
elitist values and sectarian interests. These values and interests did not include
local knowledge, culture, and human potential, or the indigenous myths and
realities that reinforced and sustained the values and cultures of autochthonous
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America. Disposed to measure progress in terms of technology, material
accumulation, and paradigms of bourgeois rationality and refinement, they sought
wisdom in the familiarity of imported discursive traditions, and fixed their servile
gaze on Europe and North America. They overlooked the original character of the
new nations, the value of the knowledge and cultures of the people, and the
peoples potential for social transformation, as well as economic and human
development, based on creative local solutions for local conditions.
In the writings of the letrados, the marginalized rural people of the
neglected countryside autochthonous America supply a barbaric opposing
force. Beginning with the 1820s, says Ramos, the activity ofwritingbecame a
response to the necessity of overcoming the catastrophe of war, the absence of
discourse, and the annihilation of established structures in the wars aftermath. To
write, in such a world, was to forge the modernizing project; it was to civilize, to
order the randomness of American barbarism (Ramos 3). Barbarism became
institutionalized in the rhetoric of the era as the primitive force opposing
civilization. It was the unformed and undisciplined reality ultimately inaccessible
to progress and modernity. Such is the view represented in Domingo F.
Sarmientos influentialFacundo, first published in 1845. Ramos argues that
Sarmiento positions himself as the polemical adversary of Andrs Bellos
disciplined and university-authorized discourses, and furthermore assumes a
subaltern position in relation to the disciplined discourse characteristic of the
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letrados and European scholarship (Ramos 3-20). Sarmiento manipulates this
position, says Ramos, to establish and benefit from the authority of an alternative
discourse, representing himself as the intellectual best placed to mediate between
civilizations written discourse and the orality of barbarism. He claims an attempt
to establish order and achieve modernity by listening to and transcribing the
alternative knowledge of the other to incorporate it into the nations modernizing
project, thereby closing the interstitialgap between civilization and barbarism
through which caudillos rose to power. To hear, then, is the technique of a
historiographical practice. And it was literature ... that would be the discourse
most suited to that project of listening to the voice of tradition (Ramos 12). In the
hierarchized space of discourse, continues Rama, Sarmiento assumes for himself
the role of transcriber between civilization and barbarism to re-present the other,
the feared outside of discourse; but the confused and irregular voice of
barbarism renders it resistant to representation and it must ultimately be subdued
and subordinated to the rational laws governing civilization, productive labour,
and the emerging market (Ramos 18). Ramos maintains that the formal
procedure of including the spoken word of the other, only to subordinate it to a
higher authority, indicates an attempt to resolve a contradiction on which
Facundo continually reflects: the lack of law in a society based on the irregularity
and arbitrary nature of the caudillo (Ramos 18). Notwithstanding Sarmientos
self-representation as civilizations subaltern voice, and regardless of the locus of
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the writer within institutionalized discourse, the rhetoric of barbarism presupposes
a civilized we that is morally, culturally, and biologically superior to a primitive,
undisciplined other. Writing was a civilizing project through which the letrado
could claim an attempt to replace chaos and backwardness with order and
modernity, for it was assumed that the unwritten word, unauthorized by
institutionalized discourse, lacked the power to order chaos and the capacity to
modernize.
Mart criticizes the false erudition of the letrados and faults the
incapacity of the ruling elites, who owe their privileges to those who labour
without benefit, to govern for the good of all sectors and for the welfare of the
nation. He condemns their sectarian agenda and their consequent failure to
integrate and transform their nations into just societies for the good of all their
people. Their disdained America is his hombre natural (OC 6: 18). He urges the
creation of new men in America and calls for the political and economic
independence, cultural emancipation, and social transformation of these nations
into just and integrated societies developed in harmony with local, natural
elements (OC 6: 20). For Mart, the creation of truly decolonized people and just
societies requires radical changes in institutionalized patterns of thinking, as well
as in social and economic relations. It must also include the integration of the
lower classes and marginalized sectors through meaningful and productive work,
the enjoyment of rights and benefits, and the celebration of culture.
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Fanon, like Mart, challenges the governing ideologies that assume, not
only that local elites are the effective, rational agents of progress and
development, but also that marginalized populations are primitive forces whose
confused voices and backward traditions must be subordinated. It is the condition
of colonialism, writes Fanon, that every effort is made to bring the colonized
person to admit the inferiority of his culture, ... to recognize the unreality of his
nation, and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own
biological structure (The Wretched236). Furthermore, the scapegoat for white
society - which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism, education,
enlightenment, refinement - will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion
and the triumph of these myths (Black Skin 194). For Fanon, the neo-colonial
elites are the obstructive forces that must be opposed if social transformation and
progress are to be achieved (The Wretched176); they must be opposed if the
process of retrogression - in which the nation is passed over for the race, and the
tribe is preferred to the state - is to be avoided (The Wretched148-9). Their
unwillingness to mobilize the masses and their incapacity to harmoniously unite
and develop the nation render them useless when national consciousness must
rapidly transform into consciousness of social and political needs, in other words
into humanism, (The Wretched204). Particularly useless is the national
bourgeoisie; not being authentic bourgeoisie, says Fanon, it lacks both the
capital and imagination to contribute to the material and cultural development of
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the nation (The Wretched176-9); and ultimately, the poverty of the people,
national oppression, and the inhibition of culture are one and the same thing
(238). For Fanon, as for Mart, a decolonized political and social consciousness
requires the disappearance of the colonized man (The Wretched246) and the
veritable creation of new men (36). Only then will forms of national culture
emerge that can contribute to human progress.
In the neo-colonial Spanish American republics, the realities and
aspirations of the majority were systematically excluded from the road to progress
charted by the ruling elites and from the exclusive we that defined for the
privileged the identity of the nation. The authority of representation rested with
the letrados, for whom the interests and desires of the elite urban sectors
represented the welfare and good of the nation. The modernizing spirit that
emerged around 1870 created professions and institutions less dependent on the
state, but did little to include the margins within the representation of the nation.
Nor did it reduce the authority and prestige of the letrados. It did, however, allow
educators and journalists a degree of autonomy from the state and opened a space
for writing outside the lettered city, mostly through journalism, to intellectuals
who could not or would not include themselves within that privileged space. The
spirit of modernity thus gave rise to the literato, made possible an autonomous
literary voice, and enlarged the space for creative writing. In so doing, it also
initiated a struggle for legitimacy attended by the need to situate the locus of
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authority for letters in the literary sphere, for autonomy from the state also
removed the writers claim to that authority. It was not until 1896, following a
break between letters and law, that letters was institutionalized as a separate
authority in the academic domain (Ramos 49-53). Nevertheless, larger urban
populations, gradually expanding literacy, and expanded markets for newspapers
and magazines in cities and towns made the literato accessible to unprecedented
numbers of new readers (Rama 50-7). The neglected countryside, however, was
largely excluded from the institutionalized ideologies and educational reforms.
Even when elements of rural customs and oral traditions became incorporated into
the canonized literatures of the new nation states, the subaltern remained beyond
hearing distance of the critical voice, and outside the dialogue of discourse and
the written word.
Re-imagining the Nation: the Inversion of Values
Marts nuestroamericanismo discourse subverts the civilization-barbarism
dichotomy by re-ordering the hierarchy of knowledge, culture, and values to
claim the autochthonous and original as the spiritual foundation of national
identity. This discourse of identity, affiliation, and resistance challenges the
authority and relevance of European rationality for the task of creating a new
people and original republics; it also redefines national identity to meaningfully
integrate all social and economic sectors. To the extent that the non-literate
subaltern remains beyond hearing distance of Marts discourse, and thereby
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excluded from the you and I of dialogue and the written word, it is
subordinated in a hierarchical relationship with the intellectual and the reading
public. However, Mart reverses this hierarchy by privileging the indigenous and
original over the European and imported. Unlike Sarmiento, who claims an
unsuccessful attempt to mediate between civilization and barbarism, Mart
makes no claim to mediate between the margins and the governing ideologies;
nevertheless, his discourse effects such mediation. Neither does Mart claim to
represent the subaltern voice, but the marginalized sectors are included in his
collective we as the foundational elements of the re-imagined national identity.
They are no longer the other - the undisciplined, irredeemable force of barbarism.
The other is represented in Marts discourse by the forces of retrogression and
imperialism: the outside-looking artificial intellectuals (the metaphorical
crouching tiger within the republic), and the aggressive industrialized United
States (the tiger that threatens from outside) (OC 6: 19). However, all sectors are
redeemable in his discourse of unity.
Humanism propels both Mart and Fanon to challenge to the intellectual
status quo and elitist ideologies. Marts idea of progress is informed by social and
historical consciousness and founded on the principle that self-development,
freedom, justice, and dignity for everyone are necessary and achievable through
social and political transformation. While technology and material accumulation
are important elements, a just society is the critical measure of human progress.
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He anticipates Fanons idea that the nature of social relations and the placement
of the people in the vision of the nation are factors that will either open the future
or lead to retrogression. To transform society and open the future, leadership
and national institutions must take account of the realities and aspirations of all
the people and govern for the good of all. For Fanon, like the elitist sectors that
promote them, ideas of progress that do not involve the combined effort of the
masses (The Wretched175) and lead to the harmonious development of the
nation are good for nothing and must be opposed (176). The leaders of the
nation must be highly conscious and armed with revolutionary principles (The
Wretched175), says Fanon, for no leader, however valuable he may be, can
substitute himself for the popular will; and the national government, before
concerning itself about international prestige, ought first to give back their dignity
to all citizens, fill their minds and feast their eyes with human things, and create a
prospect that is human because conscious and sovereign men dwell therein (205).
For Fanon, everything else is mystification, signifying nothing (The Wretched
235). In both Mart and Fanon, economic growth and material accumulation
without social consciousness and development in social welfare is not genuine
human progress. Leadership, therefore, must extend beyond the interests of elites
and intellectuals to recognize the reality of the people and incorporate it into a
national agenda that is for the good of all. Otherwise it is an obstacle to social
transformation and betrays the peoples aspirations for personal and social
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development. InBlack Skin, White Masks, recalling Hegel, Fanon writes: Man is
human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man
in order to be recognized by him It is on that other being, on recognition by
that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend (216-7). Social
transformation requires the marginalized sectors to impose their existence and to
participate in the national consciousness through free conscious activity, which
for Marx, as Petrovi! reminds us, is the species-character of the human being
(386). Meaningful social relations require reciprocal recognition and affirm the
humanity of individuals. Representation and inclusion are steps toward the future,
but alone cannot effect the necessary political and social changes. The
revolutionary intellectual, the empathetic activist, must recognize the other but
must also be recognized. In Mart, this reciprocity is enabled through a discourse
that remembers the past in order to situate autochthonous values, original
tradition, and local conditions at the centre ofnuestra Amrica. The intention is
not to attempt a return to the values, traditions, and cultural forms of the past, but
to separate the autochthonous from the denigrating myth of barbarism,
acknowledge the roots and the original character of America, and bring the
marginalized sectors into the centre of national life and culture. The colonized
man who writes for his people, says Fanon, ought to use the past with the
intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope
(The Wretched232). Enabling reciprocity is a concrete step toward the future.
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A rhetoric of the nation
Marts discourse of resistance can claim its authority from the culture of
resistance that characterizes the history of the region. Roberto Fernndez Retamar
has long contended, in Calibn y otros ensayos, that a defining characteristic of
Marts nuestra Amrica mestiza is the history and culture of resistance initiated
by its indigenous populations and continued throughout the independence wars
and other rebellions in the region, and furthermore that the importance of Marts
concept is in uniting indigenous, African and European populations in nuestra
Amrica within a common identity and a common cause. In a critique of the
culturalismo ideas of the Cuban Jos Antonio Saco and the Chilean Francisco
Bilbao, Ramos suggests that representations of the United States in Latin America
were significantly altered after the Norths expansion into Mexican territory
beginning in 1840 (Ramos 154-7). He suggests further that the development of a
literary and cultural authority is integral to the formation of modern
latinoamericanismo. He adds, referring specifically to Bilbaos writing, that in the
historical origins of modern latinoamericanismo are represented on the one hand
the exclusion and reification of the North (rationalization, reason, industry,
interest), and on the other, the inclusion of the distinct others in modernization
(the beautiful, disinterest, spirit, tradition, the subaltern) by means of the aesthetic
subjects integrating gaze (Ramos 157). Marts discourse of resistance
condemns Spains colonial hold on Cuba and warns against the United States
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hegemonic intentions in the region. It also condemns the internal obstacles to
cultural authenticity, particularly the tendency in the independent republics for the
ruling elites to disdain the autochthonous, maintain colonial traditions, and import
habits and traditions from Europe and the United States.
His resistance extends to the domain of aesthetic values and national
literature. In his Cuaderno No. 5, Mart suggests there will be no Spanish
American literature until there is a Spanish America. Without the essence there
can be no literary expression, and the immortalized writer in America will have
conveyed the essence of his complex epoch with consummate artistry (OC 21:
163-4). For Mart, the aesthetic and political dimensions of Americas
transformation are linked, giving the writer, artist or intellectual a central role in
the political and cultural emancipation of the nation. It was precisely the
transformative purpose ofLa Revista Venezolana (OC 7: 195-212) to encourage
the creation of original and uniquely Spanish American literary works. These
would reflect the essence and spirit of Spanish America and participate in the
development of national consciousness and the creation of emancipated nations.
Marts evaluative criteria consider artistic expression as well as social awareness,
reject the colonized mentality, and emphasize originality, authenticity, and
relevance. He exemplifies the revolutionary role he assigns to writers and
intellectuals in colonized and developing nations, one that requires empathetic,
non-alienated individuals who are fully aware of the true nature of social
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relations. Whereas for the letrados writing was a process for articulating
institutionalized ideologies and definitions of the national identity, for Mart, to
write is to challenge the governing ideologies, to subvert the sectarian
assumptions of the national good that jeopardize the future of the nation, and to
convey his revolutionized vision of progress and hemispheric relations. He urges
pride in the history of Spanish America, a celebration of the autochthonous as the
spiritual foundation of the nation, the integration of all sectors in the national
agenda, and unity among the nations ofnuestra Amrica to protect their political
and economic independence.
Marts writing brings together the activist and the poet to unite the
aesthetic and political. His essay, Nuestra Amrica, seamlessly combines
reason and poetics to warn against the expansionist politics of the industrialized,
modernized United States, and to urge the Spanish-speaking nations to unite in
defence of their sovereignty. It relies on history as well as figurative language
inspired by the forests and mountains of the hemisphere to convey a forceful and
timely warning: now is the time to stand guard, like the trees in close formation,
and to march united and strong, like the silver in the base of the Andes (OC 6:
15). The revolutionary nature of his aesthetic creativity gives form to original and
distinctive texts that challenge literary boundaries and represent the struggle to
create, legitimize, and establish relevant critical standards for modern literature in
Spanish America. His revolutionary spirit and the transformative nature of his
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aesthetic are evident in the poeticized prose, figurative language, and the
proliferation of images that overturn traditional constraints and characterize his
literary style. His persuasive strategies channel the power of mythology and
sacred oratory and the familiarity of religious symbolism toward his revolutionary
purpose Por smbolos, a la Mitologa: por aspiraciones, a la Religin, he
records in his Cuadernos de apuntes (OC 21: 161). National consciousness, social
awareness, and the will to resist colonialism, the new imperialism, and cultural
domination are conveyed through figures and tropes drawn from the natural
world, the ideology of work, indigenous mythology, and the world of religion. His
tropology and figurative allusions represent a harmony between nature and
humanity, include the autochthonous in the representation of national identity, and
value the everyday lives and work of the labouring classes. Nature, for instance,
though devastated by war, regenerates and provides the promise of food and
materials required by revolutionary soldiers. Figurative language also recovers the
past, concisely rendering history and the passing of time through a rapid
accumulation of images and the encapsulating power of symbols. Metaphors and
allusions represent knowledge that is confirmed by the reality of everyday
experience. Marts tropology speaks to peoples souls and intellects and moves
their passions, transforming literature into the vehicle of truth, communicating not
only through rational understanding, but also through direct appeal to their
intuitive soul.
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For Mart, the purpose of writing, the process of national consciousness,
and the authenticity of all forms of national culture are linked. Fanon observes,
generations later, that the strengthening of national unity propels the intellectual
beyond the indictment and appeal of his initial protest toward a literature of
combat (The Wretched239-40). For Fanon, national literature begins as a
literature of combat and emerges in the process of national consciousness at
precisely the moment that the writer abandons writing as a project directed toward
the colonizer as the intended reader and begins to address his or her own people
(The Wretched240). The conscious and organized undertaking by a colonized
people to re-establish the sovereignty of that nation constitutes the most complete
and obvious cultural manifestation that exists, and it is the struggle for national
liberation that provides the impetus for cultural authenticity and creativity (The
Wretched244-5). Like Mart, Fanon makes it clear that the objective is not to
return to former values, cultural forms, and social relations, for the end of the
struggle, which is fundamentally transformative, will mark the appearance of a
new humanity that will define a new humanism both for itself and for others
(The Wretched246). For Mart and Fanon active revolutionaries in anti-colonial
wars of liberation the intellectuals role is not limited to writing and speaking.
They emphasize the duty of insurrection when it is required to achieve a just
society, with all and for the good of all. The struggle that will give rise to a new
humanity and transform society, to paraphrase Fanon, involves the brain and the
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heart (The Wretched192); but it also usually requires a war of liberation and the
arduous physical work of reconstruction and nation-building. Marts intellectual
must participate physically in liberating and building the nation, for the hierarchy
that privileges intellectual labour over manual work undermines the work of
reconstruction to which everyone must actively contribute (e.g., OC 4: 264-5; OC
6: 12). He overturns and replaces this hierarchy with an ideology of work that
emphasizes meaningful labour that participates in national development.
Similarly, Fanons intellectual must take part in action and throw himself body
and soul into the national struggle. You may speak about everything under the
sun; but when you decide to speak of that unique thing in mans life that is
represented by the fact of opening up new horizons, by bringing light into your
own country, and by raising yourself and your people to their feet, then you must
collaborate on the physical plane We must work and fight with the same
rhythm as the people to construct the future and to prepare the ground where
vigorous shoots are already springing up (The Wretched232-3).
Mart led the struggle for Cubas liberation through the ideological
preparation and mobilization of the people to ensure popular support for the
independence war that would achieve dignity for each Cuban in a just and
sovereign state. For Mart, although Cuba would achieve its independence late in
the century, through governance for the good of all and faithful adherence to the
concept of nationhood as the embodiment of the popular will, it was poised to
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avoid the neo-colonial trap fallen into by the Spanish American nations that
entered the world as new republics at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless, the historical transformation of these nations into inclusive and just
societies, and the development of valid forms of national culture, as well as
regional unity, and vigilance in a world of competing ideologies would secure
their sovereignty and their future. He affirmed that Cuba, the doorway to the
Americas, would complete the final stanza in the poem of 1810. Its liberation
would precipitate the true independence ofnuestra Amrica, save the honour of
English America, and contribute to the equilibrium of the world. His
internationalism and contribution to ideas of human progress resonate in the
politics of liberation and revolutionary activism of Franz Fanon. Ultimately, both
Mart and Fanon urge transformation in the political, social, and economic
dimensions of national culture in order to create and defend sovereign states and
just societies. Within this moral and cultural space, and if we understand praxis to
be the criterion of truth, then ultimately, it is the peoples affirmation of the truth
it conveys, realized through praxis, that legitimizes the authority of discourse, art,
and other valid forms of national culture. For Mart, as for Fanon, these include
the political, social, and economic dimensions of national life, embody the
aspirations of the people, ensure the existence and sovereignty of the state, and
contribute to human development beyond national borders. Their ideas of human
progress are clearly relevant to contemporary discourses on national culture,
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humanism and global justice, and continue to inspire social activism and
liberation movements in a world in which the new imperialism has fully exploded
into hegemony on a global scale.
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