Martí and the 1889-1890 Conference

José Martí was an unofficial chronicler of the First International American Conference (Washington, United States, 1890) During his exile (1880–1895) in the United States, Martí came to know and understand his hosts well, and grew increasingly adept at interpreting their actions and words to his Latin American brothers. Martí acted as a "bridge" not only between the major languages of the Hemisphere, but also across the wide cultural gap between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin personalities and ways of being. As Uruguayan consul in New York, Martí had diplomatic status and entre to several delegations. Further, he had close personal friends in key delegations (especially the Argentine) and was a regular correspondent for several major Latin American newspapers, most notably La Nación of Buenos Aires. The observations he made in personal letters as well as his published writings are an invaluable complement to the formal documentary record of the Conference.

Martí's comments on the Washington Conference emphasize the opportunities as well as the dangers inherent in a closer relationship between Latin America and the United States. His commentary helped forge public and official opinion in Argentina and other countries regarding the motives of the United States in calling for the meeting, and to some degree they continue to influence ambivalent Latin American attitudes towards US-led Panamericanism to this day. Ultimately, Martí provided his insights into the Conference's functioning in political, psychological, cultural and linguistic terms.

Martí's findings were published in New York on 2 November 1889, and published in a Buenos Aires newspaper on 19–20 December 1889. During the conference he also wrote the essay Nuestra América (Our America), which was published 1 of January 1891 in the New York Revista Ilustrada. In the essay he stresses the threat of cultural imperialism of the United States in Latin America and develops the idea of a distinct pan-latinamerican culture. Most of his writings on the Conference have been published in book form in Buenos Aires as 'Argentina y la Primera Conferencia Panamericana'.

The "Feel" of the Conference Apart from their literary merit, Martí's writings on the Conference have historical and political value because of the way they convey the "feel" of the inner workings of the numerous meetings, and the personal characteristics of the key players. Martí refers to these inner workings as "the entrails": "Las entrañas del congreso están como todas las entrañas, donde no se las ve".José Martí, Argentina y la Primera Conferencia Panamericana, edited by Dardo Cúneo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Transición, nd, p. 81. Martí's major contribution is to reveal these "entrails" to us in all their details, be they noble or petty.

The ten members of the U.S. delegation were selected mainly for their business interest in Latin America, but none of them spoke any Spanish beyond a few words. Of the seventeen Latin American delegates, only six spoke English, and these were mainly the delegates who held diplomatic postings in Washington at the time of the Conference. It appears that the U.S. organizers of the Conference were assuming that the delegates coming from the South would speak English, like their countrymen assigned in Washington. Most did not, and even those who did, insisted on speaking in Spanish, at least in the formal sessions, for reasons of national and cultural pride.

And so the conference organizers, and the ad hoc secretariat, had to scramble at the last moment to find translators and interpreters. Two secretaries were named on the strength of their knowledge of both languages. Here is how Martí describes them: "With this the delegates began to take their seats around the conference table. The Peruvian Zegarra presides, a little nervous. On one side he has the Cuban José Ignacio Rodríguez, an expert in both languages, as well as in the art of blunting hostile harangues with skilful translation; he is also an expert in the intricacies of the law. On the other side of the presiding delegate is Fergusson, the Northamerican secretary, with his pompous moustache and Martíal voice, who grabs the Spanish he hears on the fly, and renders it into English just as he hears it, without adding any sugar or honey".Ibid, p. 120

The corps of translators struggled with their monumental task of rendering each day's deliberations into both languages. Martí notes that at the beginning the Spanish of the daily minutes was "miserable", but by late January 1890 was "fluid and elegant". The oral interpretation of speeches, especially when they became heated, was more difficult. There were, of course, no electronic facilities for simultaneous interpretation, as we would expect in any international conference today. Thus, any speech had to be interpreted consecutively into the other working language after the delegate finished. This was a lengthy and taxing process, and delegates who did speak both languages frequently would interrupt the interpreter to make corrections or points of order, further adding to the confusion. Some of the sessions became quite intense, with delegates speaking forcefully to each other. In these situations the interpreters frequently fell behind and the result was linguistic and diplomatic anarchy.

The Delegates In his contemporary published writings Martí was fairly discreet in his descriptions of the various delegates. He was less so in his private letters to Quesada, which frequently provide less than flattering sketches of the various representatives. These 27 delegates were few enough in number, and the conference was so long (October–April) that they became well known to each other and to those who, like Martí, followed the conference closely. An even more frank description of the delegates was provided later by the first secretary of the conference, Fidel G. Sierra, in correspondence which was subsequently cited by Quesada.Samuel Guy Inman, Inter-American Conferences, 1826-1954: History and Problems. Washington: The University Press, 1965, pp. 35-37.

Martí was especially effusive in his description of the Argentine delegation, which was recognized by all concerned as being the most prestigious (its two chief delegates, Roque Sáenz Peña and Manuel Quintana, later were to become Presidents of their nation). In a typical passage Martí describes Sáenz Peña as "a noble elder", and Quintana as "a vigorous young man, striding forth as if to battle" Martí, op.cit., pp.85-86

His characterizations of the U.S. delegates are less flattering. Emblematic of this treatment was the way Martí presented the Secretary of State (and prime mover of the conference) to his readers. Early in his exile in the United States Martí had much admired James G. Blaine, especially during his first tenure as Secretary in the Garfield administration in 1881, when he praised Blaine for his efforts to resolve border disputes among South American countries. But by the time of the 1889-90 conference, Martí saw another side of Blaine: his role as leader of the annexationists and expansionists in American politics, men who argued that the U.S. ought to possess Cuba after expelling the Spaniards, and that Latin America should be the logical market for the expanding industrial base of the United States.

Marti's suspicions (as well as those of many of the Latin American delegates) were fueled by the fact that most of the U.S. delegates had business or commercial backgrounds. Further, the extended six-week train trip through the United States' industrial heartland was clearly aimed at impressing the Latins with their host's commercial and economic power. As Martí notes, the size and make-up of the U.S. delegation sometimes worked against U.S. interests: these were wealthy and independent-minded businessmen who did not necessarily agree with each other or with the Secretary of State on all matters. And so the Latin delegates were frequently confused when the ten U.S. delegates expressed highly divergent opinions and voting patterns. There were several occasions, recorded by Martí,José Martí, Obras Completas, Volume 6: Nuestra América. La Habana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963, pp.107, 137 in which one U.S. delegate would make a motion and another of his countrymen would oppose it. There were also frequent moments when a proposal agreed to by a U.S. delegate in a committee session would be rejected by the U.S. delegation as a whole in plenary session.

The Conference and U.S.-Latin American Relations

Concern over U.S. Hegemony Although Martí frequently expressed his admiration for the vitality and energy of his adopted home in exile, he was also concerned that those characteristics of the United States would lead it to dominate its southern neighbors who, he felt, were ill-equipped to resist the U.S. economic, cultural, diplomatic and even military onslaught. Martí reported to his Hispanic audience, with some alarm, the frankly expansionist headlines carried by many U.S. newspapers regarding the Conference which stated that the purpose of the conference was to ratify the inevitable U.S. domination of the Hemisphere. He did see value in the Conference, however, as a mechanism by which the Latin Americans could show their Anglo-Saxon neighbor that they were capable of defending themselves with honor and dignity, and that the key to successful inter-American relations was that they be based on realism, knowledge of each other, and mutual respect.Martí, Nuestra America, op. cit., pp. 62-63

Pan-Americanism and "Americanism"

Although Martí did not oppose the U.S. concept of Panamericanism as such, he was concerned that it carried with it the implicit assumption that this current of inter-American cooperation had been launched by the United States, that its first conference was being held in Washington, that its permanent secretariat would be established a short walking distance from the White House and the State Department, and that it would serve as the vehicle for U.S. commercial and diplomatic influence in the Hemisphere.

To this concept Martí counterposed his broader notion of Americanism in terms of "nuestra América". Different from the U.S. concept of Pan-Americanism (and the Argentine one of an America still closely tied to Europe), Martí's "nuestra América" stressed the things that made the New World different and independent from Europe. The most famous expression of this "nuestra América" was a speech Martí gave at the New York "Sociedad Literaria Hispanoamericana" on 19 December 1889 to honor the visiting delegates of the First International American Conference. In it he paid homage to the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers of the United States, but his main thrust was to exalt the values of human dignity and love of liberty which he identified as belonging to all the noble sons of America.

The Issue of Cuban Independence