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The Martí Studies Center is thirty five years old.

Autor: Luis Toledo Sande | Fuente: CUBARTE | 17 de Julio 2012

Thirty five years have passed since the inauguration, on July 17, 1977, of the Marti’s Studies Center and the elapsed time will not be the main reason for which one may think it has always existed.  First, it ought to be explained, as regards to the magnitude of the work done, because it would be hard to conceive that in the José Marti’s fatherland which he honored forever, would not be an institution that accomplishes—like the  this Center does—all  these functions.

On May 19, 1977—the 82th Anniversary of Marti’s fall in combat—the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers by the Government Decree number I, ordered the creation of the “Marti’s Studies Center”. It was signed by Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, Armando Hart Dávalos, Minister of Culture and Osmany Cienfuegos Gorriarán, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers. This Decree stated the five basic issues and the tasks that this institution should accomplish, all of them inspired on Julio Antonio Mella’s work title Glosas al Pensamiento de José Martí, written in 1926.

It won’t be superfluous to remark and to remember on what those tasks consists on;

a)  To promote the study of life, work and thought of José Martí, from the point of view of dialectical and historical materialism,

 b) To gather together and preserve all the manuscripts, original editions, photographs and other subjects about José Marti,

c)  To promote the publishing of Marti’s works and others about him or related with, and for that purpose, to create and direct the book collections considered necessary,

 d)  To continue publishing the Anuario Martiano with subjects concerning the work and thought of José Martí and,
e) To promote lectures, seminars, national and international symposiums or any other activity of that sort related to José Martí.

Soon the Center showed the fervor with which it would accomplish his honorable mission–according to the nature of its subject—helped, not only in Cuba, by the ones to be in the staff when it was born and has worked on it all these years, but also by many other persons. The Center has had the good fortune that their staffs, numerically small, has been mainly integrated by people with large experience, connoisseurs of the life and work of José Martí, passionate about studying him and his works.

Even productive in terms of work and humanely, all these highly reputed persons were a valuable incentive for the youngest founders—and also for those who would follow—so as to support and help firmly to this deed, in which they were already concerned for their own vocation. In spite of someone who abandoned this project, entirely by its responsibility, this fact is irrelevant before those persons whose consecration in science and spirit to Marti’s legacy, allows the author, to overlook the detail, especially in an article, because of its necessary brevity that doesn’t give so much margin to mention all what in justice, would be pleased to say. 

This could be explained since the author has assumed an impersonal tone to avoid the risk of being caught in his own memories, and for the impossibility of going into much individual recognition that, although well-deserved, could seem unbalanced because of involuntary omissions, or even for the real impossibility of an exhaustive enumeration. Therefore, he hopes, that in what has been said, will be well represented all those who from different jobs has favored or made possible that the Center has arrived to the actual success, destined of going forward. From those who still enjoy the happiness of being alive, the only thing to be expected is to remember—as surely they do—their companions who have already passed away.

Without the multiple and passionate effort that has distinguished the work of the Center, it won’t be  possible to show what, after  having passed three and a half decades, it obtains in the fulfillment both quantitatively and qualitatively of those five tasks. So, in close collaboration with the Office of Historical Affairs of the Council of State, on whose central office well equipped vault are protected the documents. A lot of work is being done to preserve, restore and custody the invaluable list of Marti’s documents,  which have been substantially enriched from 1977 up to now, thanks in a large extent to the Center´s work, and to the respect that it has earned.

Concerning publications there is a bibliographic set of great importance both numerical and qualitative. Although the publishing of the “Edición Crítica de las Obras Completas de José Martí” (Complete Works of José Martí Critical Edition) represents a small part of the almost twenty volumes, its first one prefaced by Fidel Castro Ruz, is quite a lot to give an idea of much and good it has been done. As much can be said about the auspice, coordination or support of national and international meetings, celebrated in Cuba and abroad, in order to propitiate or to strengthen the knowledge about the life and work of José Martí. For the purpose of doing so it is worthy to mention a particular help offered to the media.

To deal with the work that the Center have done—something that could not be responsibly undertake in a brief article—special attention merits the first and guiding task. It has to be closely bound together with to the birth of the Ministry of Culture, founded a year before the Center, in 1976. The association is not circumstantial but of content.

The Ministry of Culture was founded to elevate to superior levels the cultural policy of the Cuban Revolution, which included, since the beginning, to rectify errors and distortions that most of all existed since the celebration of the First Congress of Education and Culture, in 1971, linked to a not always well understood nor well carried out struggle against what was then usually called ideological diversionism. That Congress, without analyzing it neither in every detail, nor in his good intentions and successes, was inserted in the obvious beginning of what, Ambrosio Fornet called quinquenio gris (“grey quinquennium”). The necessary rectifications began progressively in 1976.  

The efforts addressed to end up as extremism, It was planned that the study of the life and work of José Martí must be directed methodically by the dialectic and historic materialism in order to search the way to free Marti’s legacy from of mystifications that had also wreaked havoc on it, because of a strange misunderstanding or erratic application of Marxism, influenced and marked by what is known, as “real socialism”, that as it is well known crumbled stridently. Even though that consequence was foreseeable, Cuba searched a way to rectify and also refine skillfully the idea that guides the Revolution, so, as part of a whole, it would not be apart from the greatness or to the mistakes of that moment.

Two facts related with the hard work of Martí Studies Center imply particular interest to evaluate those facts and the subject that the institution followed since its foundation which had direct bearing on its future. In 1978 one of its first books edited by the Center was “Siete enfoques marxistas sobre José Martí” and re-edited later on. It contains—according to the order of its first appearing—the pioneering Glosas of Mella, already mentioned, and some other collaborations of Raúl Roa, Blas Roca Calderío, Ernesto Che Guevara, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Armando Hart Dávalos and Juan Marinello, whose death prevent him to be its first director.

Besides, in 1978, in the first number of the Anuario del Centro de Estudios Martianos gave continuity to the Anuario Martiano—which used to be published by the Marti’s Hall of the National Library—dedicated its opening pages a temporary section, with the meaningful title of “Homenaje y norma” (Homage and norm), to reproduce another Marinello’s own text: “Sobre la interpretación y el entendimiento de la obra de José Martí” (About the interpretation and understanding of José Marti’s work). At the time it was published originally in 1974, he points out the need then of restraining excesses and extreme dogmatisms like the ones already mentioned above. This article is a concentrated essay, appeared in Moncada, that was then the Interior Ministry´s magazine, and it would merit a review that doesn’t have space in this notes, where scarcely only a few passages could be look over. 

It begins stating: “One of the biggest proofs of José Marti’s essential revolutionary condition is given by the fact that it has been now, with the victory of the great revolution headed by Fidel Castro, when his true historic height is discovered”. And, later on, between signs of sustained value, declares: “But it should not be understood that what had been written about José Martí before the triumph of the Revolution lacks of value (…) It would be wrong to reject the collaborations about the singularity and greatness as writer of José Martí, like those of Enrique José Varona and Manuel Sanguily, or the ones of Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno, Federico de Onís, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Gabriela Mistral. Happily, the rectification supported by Marinello could prevent seen today to what extent the wise Marxist put one finger on it.
The work enlightenment favored by Martí Studies Center is maybe its main achievement, based in scientific responsibility assigned to it and that is, together with the ethics, the basic guide of its work, of its existence. This fact allowed the Center to develop from the beginning a wide collaboration and coordination with many other institutions, in particular, with those that had been former related to preserve and spread the treasure bequeathed by the Apostle that was necessary to save from the dogmatic censors.

Among those institutions were the El Museo Casa Natal de José Martí (José Marti’s Natal House Museum), La Fragua Martiana (Marti’s Forge), and the Junior Movement of Marti’s Studies, that, regrettably, did not maintain the fertile course that distinguished it in its first years. After the foundation of the Center, emerged or were extended many studies about Marti’s at the University and the José Martí Memorial was created. Due to many circumstances, among them the fact that the Center was born in a place where the Martí Hall used to be, provided generously by the National Library, no longer exists. Its absence left an emptiness that deserves to be filled. 

The coordinating work made by the Center, not for a moment aimed to be a monopoly nature, incompatible with the extraordinary greatness of an inheritance that exceeds the limits of the national fatherland—responsible to care for, but without a mean right of property—that belongs with an increasing valuable sense of future to the human being fatherland. All of it made hoped-for and necessary the strengthening and the development of the Center. A solution for the continuity was the foundation, in April 9, 1997, of La Oficina del Programa Martiano (Marti’s Program Office), ascribed to the Council of State,  in order to coordinate efforts for spreading nationally and internationally the thought, life and the work of Martí.

Ever since the Center, born ascribed to the Ministry of Culture, joined the institutional system of the aforementioned office, which also includes La Sociedad Cultural José Martí (Jose Martí Cultural Society). So, the Center is aimed to continue being the scientific searching branch, essential useful condition; for that purpose should keep on counting not only with its staff, but also with many other qualified people who are related with in Cuba and in other countries.

If it were needed, the Critical Edition of Marti’s Complete Works would be good enough to justify the vital importance of its condition. Only one aim might explain that the Center gave her job up: The possibility of dedicating, with all its force, to achieve that Marti’s ethics stands steady as a customary practical guide on everyday life of this country. But also it has to be a goal of the whole nation, of its institutions and of citizenship; for that reason, all the professional fruits are needed no matter what and how specific may be, grasped to indispensable collectivism in a work of such nature and magnitude, to which the Center contributes and provide that others also contribute to it all over the country. This is an effort that nothing should stop.

With that certainty is greeted El Centro de Estudios Martianos for its first thirty five years, all good wishes in this Anniversary and augur well for a long and useful life.  Great are its duties with the political, cultural, literary and ethics inheritance of José Martí of who Fidel Castro Ruz, in the aforementioned prologue to Complete Works of José Martí Critical Edition said: “He is and will be the eternal leader of our people. His legacy will never expire”.

Translation: Mercedes Carballo (Cubarte)