Letter from Jose Marti to the Council Presidents on the Board of Advisors for Key West, March 18, 1893 [Translation]

Bibliographic Information

Marti, Jose, 1853-1895, Carta de Jose Marti a los presidentes de las organizaciones de cubanos exiliados en Florida, 18 de marzo 1893 (March 18, 1893)

File description (Bibliographic Info)Encoding description (Editorial Principles)Profile description (Subject Terms)Revision description (Revision History)
Title: Letter from Jose Marti to the Council Presidents on the Board of Advisors for Key West, March 18, 1893 [Translation]
Funding from: Funding for the creation of this digitized text is provided by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Author: Marti, Jose, 1853-1895
Statements of responsibility:
  • Creation of digital images: Center for Digital Scholarship, Rice University
  • Creation of translation: Lorena Gauthereau-Bryson
  • Conversion to TEI-conformant markup: Lily Elise McKeage, Student Researcher, Humanities Research Center
  • Parsing and proofing: Humanities Research Center and Fondren Library, Rice University
  • Subject analysis and assignment of taxonomy terms: Robert Estep, Cataloger
Publisher: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Publication date: 2010-06-07
Identifier: aa00021tr
Availability: This digital text is publicly available via the Americas Digital Archive through the following Creative Commons attribution license: “You are free: to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work; to make derivative works; to make commercial use of the work. Under the following conditions: By Attribution. You must give the original author credit. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.”
Notes:
Digitization: Page images of the original document are included. Images exist as archived TIFF files, JPEG versions for general use, and thumbnail GIFs.
Translation: This document is an English translation of the "Carta de Jose Marti a los presidentes de las organizaciones de cubanos exiliados en Florida, 18 marzo, 1893." Translated by Lorena Gauthereau-Bryson. The language of the original document is Spanish.
Provenance: The Humanities Research Center at Rice University, under the direction of Dr. Caroline Levander, purchased this material from a manuscripts dealer in 2005. The Gilder Foundation funded the development of the physical archive. Original materials are housed at the Woodson Research Center, Rice University.
Description: Handwritten document, 4pp. Written from New York; Seeking financial support for El Tara, a revolutionary newspaper printed in Key West for distribution in Cuba; Written on letter head "Delegacion del Partido Revolucionario Cubano" or "delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party".
Source(s): Marti, Jose, 1853-1895, Carta de Jose Marti a los presidentes de las organizaciones de cubanos exiliados en Florida, 18 de marzo 1893 (March 18, 1893)
Source Identifier: Americas collection, 1811-1920, MS 518, Box 3 folder 09, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. Contact info: woodson@rice.edu
Description of the project: This digitized text is part of the Our Americas Archive Partnership (OAAP) project.
Editorial practices
This text has been encoded based on recommendations from Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Any comments on editorial decisions for this document are included in footnotes within the document with the author of the note indicated. All digitized texts have been verified against the original document. Quotation marks have been retained. For printed documents: Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. No corrections or normalizations have been made, except that hyphenated, non-compound words that appear at the end of lines have been closed up to facilitate searching and retrieval. For manuscript documents: Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. We have recorded normalizations using the reg element to facilitate searchability, but these normalizations may not be visible in the reading version of this electronic text
Languages used in the text: English
Text classification
Keywords: Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus
  • Correspondence
Keywords: Library of Congress Subject Headings
  • Cuba--Politics and government--1810-1899
  • Exiles--Cuba--History--19th century
  • Exiles--United States--Florida--History--19th century
Keywords: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
  • Cuba (nation)
Revision/change: 2009
  • Converted from P4 to P5

1

DELEGATION
Of the
Cuban Revolutionary Party

New York, March 18, 1893
Council Presidents on the Board of Advisors for Key West

Messrs. Presidents:

By way of the Office of the Secretary of this Board of Advisors, the Delegation has
become aware of the practical difficulty of implementing the assistance plan for El Yara
newspaper, which requires individual Council contributions to the publication; this plan
was proposed by the "José Rafael Estrada" club as one of the explicit duties of the
Delegation, and was accepted by the latter.

The Delegation would have taken the measure it takes today from the beginning, but due
to its desire and pleasure to respect the unique suggestions and projects of each locality, it
thought it best to leave the intimately local matters on which this affair had been
proposed to the Board's deliberation.

Having confirmed today the Delegation's doubt regarding the practicability
[...] 1

2

of the proposed plan, and with the Delegation's desire, more than ever and with more
reason than ever before, to encourage all sectors and to stimulate the advancing campaign
in Cuba, the Delegate believes it is immediately necessary to help the Key West
newspaper "El Yara" de Key West with activity funds, the amount of which will be
proposed by a Council in that locality, in accordance with the section of the Statutes
detailing publication expenses. This newspaper– as the only daily revolutionary
newspaper, printed hour after hour at the very door of Cuba– is printed with the goal of
spreading continuous words of enthusiasm and criticism about Cuba to the Island of
Cuba. This latter goal is its most important service, which targets and attacks, without
taking a day off, the other newspapers that the Delegation has working on the Island.

Today, the daily voice of the revolution on the island is urgent.

3

The weekly journals are not enough to confront the clever propaganda. Because of this
situation, every article must be imbued with the whip and faith. It is critical that “El
Yara” be able to maintain its increased circulation and that it receive financial support for
the cause it sustains with so much strength and decorum. Without such outside assistance,
it is clear that a newspaper of this type, which is published in a small locality, cannot
remain solvent solely through its public subscription base. For these reasons, the
Delegation, through this letter, shall provide the sum of three hundred pesos from the
activity funds to El Yara newspaper. It will be paid with the first funds to enter that local
Treasury, after covering any pending obligations.

Yet it is not enough for the Delegation to draft and execute this resolution, but rather, it
yearns to leave a lasting witness to the necessary unselfish and energetic qualities of the
patriot, whose spirit

4

encourages and sustains Key West's "El Yara" in order to create and save this unique
newspaper. This resolution must account for the costs and difficulties of running a strictly
honorable newspaper, the only Cuban paper which, fueled with nothing more than the
fervent patriotism of its editor, provides emigrants with the voice of unity, and Cuba with
the voice of the revolution everyday. Do not be afraid of honoring those who merit it!

And to those Cubans who are members of the Clubs, whose discipline and organization
have helped to preserve the auxiliary funds dedicated to our emancipation effort and have
applied them to our urgent necessities, this Delegation is proud of the merits of its
compatriots and salutes them as they confront challenging tasks.

Delegate
José Martí

Rice University
Date: 2010-06-07
Available through the Creative Commons Attribution license