Abstract
This chapter shows how José Martí's former students frequently built explanations of their participation in his movement and of his unique qualities as a leader around descriptions of Thursdays at La Liga—evenings whose principal purpose was to support them in their efforts to remake themselves from dignified workers into writers and intellectuals. This was the context in which, together with Martí, they imagined a republic “without a single Cuban who did not feel himself to be a man.” The politics of race and Cuban nationalism could involve discussions about many things—slavery, labor, land, sex, or military service—but for the participants in the seminars at La Liga, it was centrally about their own right to be thinkers. When the radial lines of the resurgent nationalist movement crossed paths at La Liga, the politics of race and nationalism converged with a specific project of literary self-making and intellectual assertion.
Published Version
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