Editing Understanding Fidel Castro (section)

== North American Neo-Colonialism ==

Both Castro and Martí fought against the North American colonial threat, but some Traditionalist scholars argue that Martí loved the United States and viewed it favorably.  If those scholars’ argument were true, Castro’s anti-Americanism would be a major contradiction to Martí’s writing. Traditionalist exile José Solis juxtaposes two statements to suggest that Martí was not anti-American when he writes, “José Martí era antimperialista, pero ¿era Martí antinorteamericano?”  Yet Martí’s major works suggest that he viewed the United States as an empire, and that he only admired the idea North American freedom early on. Consequently, Solís can only cite excerpts from the beginning of Martí’s stay in the U.S. like, "un país, prendado, sí, de la libertad," because Martí stopped writing of that “libertad” when he realized the law did not apply to everyone.   This assumption might also be taken by less-politically charged readers who are unaware of Martí’s extensive travels in Spain, various countries in Latin America and the United States. Given Martí’s professional and governmental experiences as a printer in Mexico, an Uruguayan ambassador to the United States, and as a Cuban delegate and Latin American correspondent in New York City, Martí had more first-hand exposure to American neo-colonial ambitions than Fidel Castro, the most formidable and influential anti-American in the years following the Cuban revolution. Martí’s most important writing criticized the United harshly and warned Latin America, made evident by titles like En Las Entrañas del Monstruo (the U.S.) and “Nuestra América”.  Even though many Traditionalists demonstrate that Martí did praise the United States for some its attributes in his first year’s in New York in order to prove how Castro contradicts Martí’s writing on the North America and economy, the suspicious perceptions of colonial ambitions, like mineral exploitation, that appear in Martí’s work from Mexico early in his adult life and the socially critical journalism he produced later from the U.S. link him to Castro’s resistance to the superpower and its racist culture.
While living in Mexico from 1875 to 1878 Martí wrote poetry and published prose in Mexican newspapers, but much of the work from this period had been traditionally ignored by scholars because Martí declared in 1895, just before his death, that all the poetry he wrote before Ismaellios (1882) was worthless and should be ignored. None of these works should be ignored because they exist and, therefore, were at the behest of a young Fidel Castro, searching for ideological direction. The similarities between the two thinkers become apparent when readers review a period where Martí wrote for Revista Universal (Mexico) known as Bolitines de Orestes (late 1870s). Ottmar Ette summarizes the hard-to-find bulletins:

 “[H]e paints for his readers an outline of the incipient industrial development of Mexico, mentioning the country’s woods, its mineral resources as they were beginning to be exploited (in several occasions Martí pointed to the need for Latin American countries to avoid basing future economic development on the deceptive wealth of mines, which he associated with the most characteristic component of colonial economic system)[.]” 

Martí presciently associates mining wealth and colonialism. His work charged Castro and other leaders beware of foreign mining operations. Readers see that even in his nascent years, Martí was both cognizant of the U.S.’s exploitative tendencies in the region and of the historical exploitation of Latin America mineral wealth. In 1960, Fidel Castro reacted to the warnings of Martí, and the most important difference between the men on the issue of mining became political power not ideology; Castro had the authority to implement their similar beliefs.
Castro’s early speeches and revolutionary policies reflect Martí’s wariness of the mineral wealth and foreign development. In September of 1960, Castro told the United Nations: “Cuba produce…mucho níquel; todo el níquel era explotado por intereses norteamericanos. Y [antes de la revolución], bajo la tiranía de Batista, una compañía norteamericana, la Moa Bay, había obtenido concesión tan jugosa que en cinco años solamente…iba a amortizar una inversión de 120 millones de dólares; 120 millones de dólares de inversión, amortizable en cinco años.”  Though characteristically more inflamed in his critique than Martí, Castro actively highlighted the relationship between mineral wealth and colonialism, too, like Martí. Due to political powers he wielded that Martí did not, he also had the authority to go on “Meet the Press” days later to tell the American mining companies that they either needed to pay a 25% tax for all Cuban nickel exported or leave the island.  Eventually he expropriated the North American holdings and nationalized the nickel mines. Castro reasoned that Cuban citizens could not be denied the profits of a metal commodity in their land precisely if they collectively owned the operation. This example of Castro’s desire to empower the Cuban nation demonstrates a clear link between Castro’s policy and Marti’s writing.
Based on his actions, Castro probably read this little known excerpt from Martí’s Mexican writings, where he warns Mexicans of foreign mining companies’ exploitative practices:
'' Su riqueza minera comenzará a ser útil al país, cuando pueda aplicarse en beneficio de él mismo, y no haya de llevarse fuera de la patria en pago de las más sencillas necesidades materiales y domésticas. Las minas no son hoy un alimento de la riqueza nacional: sus productos se exportan, en pago de los efectos de consumo que se importan a México y que por su naturaleza y la actual constitución social, han menester  renovación pronta y constante...Fuerza es ante todo alentar y premiar, aun de manera extraña y desusada, todos los ramos de la industria nacional.'' 

Martí asked for force (fuerza), and Castro clearly responded with force.
Progressive racial discourse further underscores the connection that exists between Castro and Martí because both men opined reparations for the disinherited descendants of African slaves.  Martí sought to deemphasize race, but our privileged historical viewpoint has shown it took more than just racial blindness to alleviate Cuban racial inequities. In “Mi Raza” Martí writes: “[un] hombre es más que blanco, más que mulato y más que negro.” He added that “[t]odo lo que divide a los hombres, todo lo que especifica, aparta o acorrala es un pecado contra la humanidad.”  North Americans fixation on race confused Martí. Even though legal slavery lasted longer in Cuba than any other country in the West, the racial politics of nineteenth-century New York City disgusted him, so he criticized New Yorkers. A civil war reunion in Gettysburg on July 4, 1887 pushed him further to suggest reparations. Oscar Montero quoted Martí saying of Afrodescent Cubans, “they are owed, of course they are owed, reparation for the offense.”  
Castro followed his purported influence because after he took power he offered every Afrodescent literacy, health insurance and housing. Of course, everyone in Cuba received these benefits. It is noteworthy here, though, because through this reform, Castro significantly leveled the Cuban playing field as it relates to race.  In a bias but informative portrayal of Fidel Castro in Commandante, Oliver Stone asks Fidel about how his revolution affected the social welfare of Cuba’s “black population.” Fidel responded in saying, “La población negro fue más pobre; ellos mas beneficiaron por la revolución.” An Afrodescent Cuban in the next frame then quoted Nicolás Guillen’s famous phrase about Fidel’s gift of revolution to Afrodescents—“Gracias a él, tengo lo que tengo.”  His support of Afrodescents in Cuba and abroad starkly contrasted the American realities at the same time. Castro knew the situation in the United States and he made the joust for racial equality public when he accepted the fugitive Black Panther William Lee Brent in 1969. Castro and Martí seem like-minded on the issue of race, but race just signifies one cultural way in which Castro and Martí resisted the cultural hegemony of the United States.