LILLIAN GUERRA. The Myth of Jose Marti: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth Century Cuba. (Envisioning Cuba.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 310. Cloth $59.95, paper $22.50

Abstract

How the Cuban intellectual, journalist, and revolutionary nationalist José Martí influenced Cuban society and history between 1890 and 1921 is the subject of Lillian Guerra's book. Using a rich collection of archival materials that includes most of Martí's written works and speeches, Cuban and U.S. government records, correspondence, and newspaper articles as well as the personal papers of some members of Cuba's popular classes (black and white veterans, middle-class women, teachers, and organized laborers), Guerra explores how many Cubans developed different and competing interpretations of Martí as heroic icon. They also used his concepts of Cuba libre and Cubanidad in order not only to win Cuba's independence from Spain but also to invent the independent republican state that Martí himself would have created if he had survived the War of 1895. The process began with Martí's own endeavors to mobilize and recruit Cubans to fight for Cuba's independence before 1895. But the invention and use of multiple Martí's really accelerated during and after the U.S. military occupation of the island. Guerra argues that it was only after Martí's death at the beginning of the 1895 War of Independence that he became to most Cubans the “touchstone for the expression and debate of Cuban national expressions until 1921.”