'Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive them out?' José Martí, the father of Cuban independence, asked from his New York exile in 1889. Six years later, as Cuba's revolt against Spanish colonial rule began, Martí, now back in Cuba, was still preoccupied with the US threat. 'What I have done, and shall continue to do,' he wrote in his last letter, 'is to . . . block with our blood . . . the annexation of the peoples of America to the turbulent and brutal North that despises them . . . I lived in the monster and know its entrails - and my sling is that of David.' The next day he was killed by Spanish troops at the battle of Dos Ríos.

LRB 26 March 2009 | PDF Download