Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.8.1.0120
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Date: 01 April 2016
• Pages: 120410-122
• Author: Robert Huish

120 BOOK REVIEWs

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 8.1 SprIng 2016

Alfredo J. López, José Martí: A Revolutionary Life (Austin, TX: University of

Texas Press, 2014) hb 410pp. ISBN: 978-0292739062

Reviewed by Robert Huish

Should we ever meet our heroes? Is there a danger that comes when we know

our champions in too much detail? Sex scandals, embarrassing health condi-

tions, taking to fear and remorse can all tint the pristine image of our idols and

can even lead to questioning our own moral values. In producing an incredibly

well-researched biography on José Martí, a product of meticulously pain-staking

research, Alfredo J. López asks his readers to know the man behind the myth.

Martí, the venerated apostle of Cuban nationalism on both sides of the Florida

Straits, enjoys a larger than life reputation among Cubans and among many in

Latin America. López suggests that ‘the Martí legend has necessarily grown to

fill strategic vacuums’ and ‘many of those who profess to love Martí know little

of his life and works beyond an official, politically managed version,’ which

produces a ‘selective blindness among Martí scholars’ (p. xi). In producing José

Martí: A Revolutionary Life, López’s project is about introducing Martí enthu-

siasts in the English-speaking world to a richer portrait of the iconic figure.

Amid an ornately detailed narrative of Martí’s life, López dedicates time to inter-

esting, albeit opprobrious, controversies of Martí’s life and death, which make

for curious points of focus in the biography. For Martí enthusiasts, this book

will be an important cornerstone of scholarship for two reasons. First, López’s

detail to archival research is exemplary, and it will greatly inform the accuracy

of Martí scholarship. Second, López’s focus on Martí’s philandering and the

simulacrum of mortality, discussed in this book meant to defame the myth of

man, will raise important debates about the legitimacy of archival sources for

Cuban Studies scholars more broadly.

López suggests that outside of the Cuban community, Martí is nobody. He

says, ‘American, most of whom could easily pick Fidel Castro or Ricky Ricardo

out of a line-up, relatively few would even recognize Martí’s name’ (p. ix). For a

nation that consumes countless hours of media attention in the interest of elect-

ing a four-time bankrupt real estate developer turned haphazard TV star as their

next president, it is not surprising that a nineteenth-century Cuban revolution-

ary man of letters does not factor high on CNN or Reddit. Perhaps López over-

looks the rich lieu de memoire of Martí across the Americas, and that Martí

iconography is not solely grounded in the political camps of Havana or Miami.

A statue to Martí is at the entrance to Central Park in New York on 59th street.

A bust of Martí sits near the Plains of Abraham in Québec City. Ybor City, Key

West, Guatemala City, Rome, New Orleans, Buenos Aires and Montevideo all