The publication in 1946 of José Martí’s Cartas a Manuel A. Mercado (University of Mexico) brought to light the existence of articles written by the Cuban martyr for the Mexican daily El Partido Liberal, only two of which had not been included in his collected works. This new volume of his writings brings to eleven the number published in the Partido Liberal in the nine months from May 15, 1886, to February 14, 1887.
In Nuevas cartas de Nueva York, Mejía Sánchez has gathered the fruits of his research in the Partido Liberal: thirty-one articles, which may not be all there are to find and which include several questionable attributions. Numbers XV and XX (both unsigned) may have been forwarded by Martí from New York for someone else, but are certainly not in his style. Number XXII probably is not Martí’s, although it is signed “El Amigo,” a pseudonym used in connection with articles he wrote. Mejía Sánchez himself has wisely relegated Number XXXI (unsigned, and about a ball in Washington) to the appendix, noting: “Martí’s hand can be found in this and other similar chronicles, but they cannot properly be attributed in their entirety to him.”
The reader will not find Martí’s views on important fresh subjects in this volume. The rescued articles do, however, afford fresh perspectives and opinions on familiar subjects: Henry George and the social problems of his times, journalist A. K. Cutting and his role in quarrels between the United States and Mexico, the anarchist movement, labor and immigration problems, education, American women, and sports.
We knew that Martí on occasion sent the same or similar articles to El Partido Liberal and the Buenos Aires paper La Nación, for which he acted as United States correspondent during the same period. His creative capacity was such, however, that he generally wrote on different topics for the two papers. With these new pages we can see that the creative wellsprings were even deeper than we could have suspected. For instance, we were aware that in October 1886 Martí wrote a chronicle on “The Autumn Elections” for La Nación, as well as his admirable and lengthy piece on “The Celebrations at the Statue of Liberty.” To that astonishing production we must now add three excellent articles on various subjects written for El Partido Liberal. The total in 26 days: more than 50 printed pages, almost 30,000 words of the richest prose written in the Spanish language in the nineteenth century.
Perhaps the most outstanding of the chronicles included in Nuevas cartas is Number VII, an analysis of American Society. The severe scrutiny to which freedom is subjected in this “correspondence” is without parallel in Martí’s works.
Nuevas cartas is a most valuable contribution and should quickly find a place in the Obras completas published in Havana by Editorial Nacional de Cuba, which has zealously collected new material as it appears.
