"Nuestra America": Territory and Place

Nuestra América is the conceptual centre of a discourse of identity, affiliation and resistance that urges the unity of the Spanish-speaking nations while linking them to other countries of the Western Hemisphere, former colonies of various European powers, also subject to or threatened by the political and economic hegemony of the United States. His development of this unifying concept culminated in his essay, “Nuestra América” (6: 15-23) which appeared in La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York on January 1, 1891, and later that month, on January 30, in Mexico’s El Partido Liberal. “Nuestra America” exemplifies the scope and depth of Martí’s political activism, for it transcends the limitations inherent in a specific response, at a given moment, to certain structures or particular hostile manoeuvres and provides a vision that uses a people’s history to redefine their identity, integrate their marginalized sectors and unite their nations so that together they would create a future that acknowledges their autochthonous elements and original character, secures their independence, and ensures justice and dignity for all citizens. Whether or not Martí consciously intended “Nuestra América” as a political manifesto for Spanish American unity and historical transformation, it may be regarded as one, for it reflects that type of public declaration in purpose and substance. It offers a programmatic approach to their renewal and a conceptual framework from which to reclaim their origins, acknowledge their proud history, evaluate their achievements, transform their societies, and effectively resist the eminent threat of United States domination.

Diacritics, 2018

This paper proposes a new way to read José Martí’s idea of “Nuestra América”, one that focus on the mode of the call for unity toward liberation and decoloniality. In particular, I offer the arguments for this Latin American unity that would define a collective form of resistance against our colonial past and present (Europe) and an imperialist future (USA). It can be argued that it is extremely difficult to translate the Cuban author’s thought by itself to our contemporary struggles, and that this notion runs the risk of being an outdated, naïve, and even detrimental reduction of a too complex racial reality. In my paper, I defend a way in which this notion is still relevant today by alluding to the mode of a decolonial return to one's own land in the works of of Édouard Glissant’s and Gloria Anzaldúa. In these two authors I see elements of the criticism of a colonial rootedness and filiation, linking a decolonial attitude toward the land with a particular way of returning to it: one that challenges a mythical, pure territorial space, and also reimagines the temporality of the return by focusing on the present. With the help of this novel gesture of returning to the land, I argue that Martí's nuestra América voices a call for unity and independence that still has value beyond its undeniable shortcomings.

Revista Eletrônica da ANPHLAC, 2012

Esse artigo analisa como Martí e Rodó apresentaram o conceito de “América” e “juventude” para produzir seus discursos. Investigamos como a América aparece em suas enunciações para identificarmos as razões que levaram ambos os autores a discursarem de maneira a abranger boa parte do continente, não restringindo apenas a seus países e, concomitantemente, marcar uma diferenciação em relação aos Estados Unidos. Também mostra como a modernização no continente, em fins do século XIX e início do XX, contribuiu para a aproximação dos intelectuais neste período.

Critical Studies, 2002

Global Affairs, 2011

La reciente gira sudamericana del presidente Barack Obama terminó por desencantar a la burguesía latinoamericana que especulaba con grandes anuncios para relanzar las relaciones hemisféricas. El desencanto fue creciendo en cada una de las escalas, Brasil, Chile y El Salvador. El gesto más claro y contundente fue la orden de bombardear Libia y dar inicio a la operación ³Odisea del Amanecer´, en cumplimiento de la resolución 1973 de Naciones Unidas, consensuada entre el Consejo de Seguridad, la OTAN y la Liga Arabe. La orden fue impartida el 19 de marzo mientras Obama se distraía del protocolo oficial en Brasilia. Nada mejor que esta decisión podía desenmascarar el contenido de la retórica de ³derechos humanos, democracia, cooperación, libre comercio´ con que Obama envolvió la presentación de la agenda de intereses económicos y políticos de Estados Unidos en América Latina. En la anterior puesta en escena durante el año 2009, en la V° Cumbre de las Américas en Trinidad y Tobago, cuando Obama acababa de asumir el cargo, las burguesías latinoamericanas creían asistir a una nueva era de relaciones de ³buena vecindad´. En aquella ocasión el periodista Chuck Todd de la NBC le preguntó en conferencia de prensa: ³¿cuáles son los pilares de la Doctrina Obama?´. El presidente contestó: ³hay un par de principios que traté de aplicar en todos los ámbitos: Número uno, que los Estados Unidos siguen siendo la más poderosa y rica nación de la tierra, pero no somos la única nación. Que los problemas que enfrentamos, sean los carteles de la droga, el cambio climático, el terrorismo, ustedes nómbrenlos, no pueden ser resueltos por un solo país. Y creo que si te mueves con este enfoque, estás más inclinado a escuchar y no solo hablar« Reconocemos que hay otros países que tienen buenas ideas, y queremos escucharlos. El hecho de que una buena idea llega desde un pequeño país como Costa Rica no debe de manera alguna disminuir el hecho de que es una buena idea. Creo que la gente aprecia esto. Número dos, estoy convencido de que en su mejor momento Estados Unidos representa un conjunto de valores e ideales universales; creo en la idea de las prácticas democráticas, la idea de la libertad de opinión y religión, la idea de una sociedad civil donde la gente tiene la libertad de perseguir sus sueños y no es constantemente oprimida por el gobierno. Tenemos un conjunto de ideas con una amplia aplicabilidad. Pero también creo que hay otros países con culturas diferentes, perspectivas diferentes, y que provienen de diferentes historias. Debemos hacer lo mejor para promover nuestros ideales y nuestros valores mediante nuestro ejemplo´. En esa atmósfera imperialista aunque seductora, el presidente Chávez le regaló un ejemplar de ³Las venas abiertas de América Latina´, de Eduardo Galeano. En agradecimiento el presidente Obama instaló 7 bases militares en Colombia y sostuvo el golpe militar en Honduras. Este segundo viaje careció de aquella atmósfera seductora. En consecuencia la gira eligió cuidadosamente sus escenarios y terminó a las apuradas por la crisis en Libia.

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2007

During the past two decades, studies of culture, politics, history, and literature have converged in what could be described as a dizzying rush to understand the relation-ship of ethnicity, mestizaje and nationality to enduring Latin American structures of coloniality (Anzaldúa 1987; Menchú 1992; Wade 1993; Rappaport 1994; Hale1996; Mignolo 2000; De la Cadena 2002; Castro-Klarén and Chasteen 2003;Miller 2004; Moraña 2005; and Quijano 2006). Earlier, during the nineteenth century, these same problems were addressed from divergent ideological perspectives,albeit from within the liberal paradigm. In this paper I would like to discuss three foundational paradigms for interpreting national cultures as expounded in a trio of Hispanic American essayists whose ideas dominated the second half of the nineteenth century. The first one put forth by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina:1811-1888) posits as fact a colonialist grid that supposes the superiority of one culture over others. The second postulated by José Martí (Cuba: 1853-1895) rejects the first in favour of what could be understood as an early postcolonial model based on equality, at once envisioning heterogeneous components coalescing for a mutually beneficial existence, while negating, at times, their differences. The third elucidated by Eugenio María de Hostos (Puerto Rico: 1839-1903) is rooted in the same enlightened precepts that inform the second, but radicalizes it, recommending miscegenation with the ultimate goal of a homogeneous population. This article will show how the latter two overcome the original paradigm as they establish a liberating discourse relevant to Latin America.

A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina, 2015

In his seminal essay "Our America," José Martí wrote, "The history of America from the Incas to the present must be taught in clear detail and to the letter, even if the Archons of Greece are overlooked. Our Greece must take priority over the Greece which is not ours." 2 Martí's call to arms, written in the twilight of Spanish Empire and just before the United States would impose its will on the shape and outcome of Cuba's thirty-year independence struggle, took on new meaning for me last year while teaching in one of the few remaining required core curricula in the United States. To a historian of Latin America, the prospect of narrating "western civilization" from Plato to the present is daunting in its own right; making good on Martí's exhortation while doing so seems all but impossible.

A Contracorriente, 2006

This book assembles a series of polemical arguments about the location of "Latin America" in the Western construction of history and knowledge. Its central theme is "the idea of Latin America," a concept whose meaning, genealogy and implications the author endeavors to unpack and unravel. The book is divided into three parts, corresponding to the shifts in the meaning and geo-political location of the "idea" of the subcontinent. At first the concept "America" is presented as a derivative of the expansion of Christian Europe in the sixteenth century and, consequently, as an invention saturated by racism and religious categories. In a second moment, during the nineteenth century, as Creole intellectuals rush to appropriate European models for society, culture and politics, they redefined the subcontinent as the land of

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2010