Weathering Exile: Precarity and José Martí in New York City of the 1880s

Sarah Skillen, University of Southern California, “Weathering Exile: Precarity and José Martí in New York City of the 1880s”: In his essay “El abrigo de aire,” Antonio José Ponte describes the tragicomic character... [ view full abstract ]

Sarah Skillen, University of Southern California, “Weathering Exile: Precarity and José Martí in New York City of the 1880s”: In his essay “El abrigo de aire,” Antonio José Ponte describes the tragicomic character that José Martí, the father of Cuban independence, must have cut as he dashed between the homes of fellow Cuban exiles in New York City and absentmindedly left his coat thrown over the back of a chair before racing into the chilly winter night. For Ponte, that coat has come to symbolize the ubiquity of Martí’s name and work in Latin America, as ubiquitous as the air that we breath. The aim of this essay will be to trace the figure of Martí before he became Cuba’s national hero and his name synonymous with nuestra América. I will look to the period of precarity and vulnerability when illness, a marriage in ruins, the foundering of the revolution, and an illegitimate daughter left Martí teetering on the edge of disaster. I will also look to the ways in which the greatness of New York City, the pinnacle of modernity’s might, figures as one of the protagonists in the drama of Martí’s life. Over time, his blind admiration would be tempered and New York would come to shape Martí’s philosophy for an autonomous and independent Latin America. Following Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou’s concepts of precarity, dispossession, and the up-againstness of borders, I will examine the Cuban body exiled in a New York winter as a means of interrogating power and vulnerability.