Translators From Cuba

"Cultivo una rosa blanca En julio como en enero, Para el amigo sincero Que me da su mano franca.Y para el cruel que me arranca El corazon con que vivo, Cardo ni ortiga cultivo, Cultivo una rosa blanca."

"Sueño con claustros de mármol donde en silencio divino los héroes, de pie, reposan; ¡de noche, a la luz del alma, hablo con ellos: de noche! Están en fila: paseo entre las filas: las manos de piedra les beso: abren los ojos de piedra: mueven los labios de piedra: tiemblan las barbas de piedra: empuñan la espada de piedra: lloran: ¡viba la espade en la vaina! Mudo, les beso la mano."

"It is not the form of things that must be attended to but their spirit. The real is what matters, not the apparent. In politics, reality is that which is unseen. Politics is the art of combining a nation’s diverse or opposing factors to the benefit of its domestic well-being, and of saving the country from the open enmity or covetous friendship of other nations."

"When a nation is invited to join in a union with another, the ignorant, bedazzled statesman might rush into it, young people enamored of beautiful ideas and lacking good sense might celebrate it, and venal or demented politicians might welcome it as a mercy and glorify it with servile words, but he who feels in his heart the anguish of the patria, he who watches and foresees, must investigate and must say what elements constitute the character of the nation that invites and the nation that is invited, and whether they are predisposed toward a common labor by common antecedents and habits, and whether or not it is probable that the fearsome elements of the inviting nation will, in the union it aspires to, be developed to the endangerment of the invited one."

""Racist" is a confusing word, and it should be clarified. Men have no special rights simply because they belong to one race or another. When you say "men," you have already imbued them with all their rights."

"Everything that divides men, everything that specified, separates or pens them, is a sin against humanity."

"To insist on racial divisions, on racial differences, in an already divided people, is to place obstacles in the way of public and individual happiness, which can only be obtained by bringing people together as a nation."

"What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists? White men who think their race makes them superior to black men admit the idea of racial difference and authorize and initiate black racists. Black men who proclaim their race — when what they are really proclaiming is the spiritual identity that distinguishes one ethnic group from another — authorize and incite white racists. Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights; discrimination is contrary to Nature and the enemy of peace. Whites who isolate themselves also isolate Negroes. Negroes who isolate themselves incite and isolate whites."

"In Cuba, there is no fear of a racial war. Men are more than whites, mulattos or Negroes. Cubans are more than whites, mulattos or Negroes. On the field of battle, dying for Cuba, the souls of whites and Negroes have risen together into the air."

"Ostentatious men who are governed by self-interest will combine, whether white or black, and the generous and selfless will similarly unite. True men, black and white, will treat one another with loyalty and tenderness, out of a sense of merit and the pride of everyone who honors the land in which we were born, black and white alike. Negroes, who now use the word "racist" in good faith, will stop using it when they realize it is the only apparently valid argument that weak men, who honestly believe that Negroes are inferior, use to deny them the full exercise of their rights as men. White and black racists would be equally guilty of racism."

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."

"Liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect."

"Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."

"Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies."

"Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together. You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."

"We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor."

"Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand."

"The vote is the most effective and merciful instrument that man has devised to manage his affairs."

"Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men. The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest. An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life. A nation that neglects either of these forces perishes. They must be steered together, like a pair of carriage horses."

"Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything."

"The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task."

"We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it. If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour."

"It is necessary to make virtue fashionable."

"Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate."

"Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity. He who seeks it elsewhere will not find it for, having drunk from all the glasses of life, he will find satisfaction only in those."

"Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life. To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly."

"Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making. To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft. Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright. A selfish man is a thief."

"He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter."

"A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel."

"Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo."

"It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity."

"There are men who live contented though they live without decorum. Others suffer as if in agony when they see around them people living without decorum. There must be a certain amount of decorum in the world, just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without decorum, there are always others who themselves possess the decorum of many men. These are the ones who rebel with terrible strength against those who rob nations of their liberty, which is to rob men of their decorum. Embodied in those men are thousands of men, a whole people, human dignity."

"Through a marvelous law of natural compensation, he who gives of himself grows, and he who turns inward and lives from small pleasures, is afraid to share them with others, and only thinks avariciously of cultivating his appetites loses his humanity and becomes loneliness itself. He carries in his breast all the dreariness of winter. He becomes in fact and appearance an insect."

"Man is not an image engraved on a silver dollar, with covetous eyes, licking lips and a diamond pin on a silver dickey. Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing."

"A genuine man goes to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go to the roots. He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical."

"To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity. It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing."

"Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness."

"There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so. To fulfill one's duty elevates the soul to a state of constant sweetness. Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world."

"In truth, men speak too much of danger. Let others be terrified by the natural and healthy risks of life! We shall not be frightened! Poison sumac grows in a hard-working man's field, the serpent hisses from its hidden den, and the owl's eye shines in the belfry, but the sun goes on lighting the sky, and truth continues marching across the earth unscathed."

"Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them."

"The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women. But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible."

"That Martí is a madman — but a dangerous madman."

"While it is the sovereign right of the Cuban people to cherish Jose Marti as their own son of the soil it can be said honestly and accurately without the slightest disagreement from the unselfish, Cuban people that Marti belongs not only to Cuba but to all of the Americas."

"Sin embargo no has muerto Martí, sólo duermes;/la tierra te pidió como bandera...A tu pecho, José Martí, toco entre lágrimas,/en esta hora del hombre y de la guerra,/para que llegues, a la paz, despierto,/sobre el dolor más grande de la América."

"José Martí, fulcrum of the revolution that made Cuba free, died in the struggle, but not before he had bequeathed the country which in so large part owes him its independent existence a record in poetry and in prose which is testimony to one of earth's no- blest spirits. Federico de Onís has said of him that his life is among the purest in the history of mankind. Martí's poetry has the seemingly effortless spontaneity of the born lyrist. His prose, as P. Henríquez Ureña has pointed out, was always written either to promote the liberation of Cuba, or earn him enough to live on so that he might continue promoting the liberation of Cuba, and "is thus journalism, but journalism raised to an artistic level that has never been equaled in Spanish, nor probably in any other language.""

"We Cuban artists have played a decisive role not only in the Cuban society of today but also in its greatest definition throughout our history. We Cuban artists have contributed to improving our values, to articulating our character, to stimulating the clearest cultural resistance, to understanding ourselves better, to creating a world where, as the poet José Martí demanded, the most important currency is the full dignity of man and woman..."

"By the mid-nineteenth century, José Marti-hero and example to revolutionaries and dissidents alike-was writing important poetry in the modernist tradition."

"José Martí always stated that the republic would have been impossible without the brawn and muscle of all races."

"Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint Louverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin."

"Mormino and Pozzeta, professors who studied the labor world of Ybor City, quote Cuban national leader and writer José Martí as saying that "the readers' platforms in the factories were advanced pulpits of liberty.""