“Allá en tierras del Sur”: Horror and Recoil in José Martí’s New Orleans

While José Martí’s escenas norteamericanas and other writings on the United States are most often analyzed from the perspective of “us” versus “them,” following his famous formulation of “Our America” as a Latin American zone threatened by the expansionist designs of its northern neighbor, the Cuban independence leader was also attentive to regional identities and issues within the United States. In two journalistic texts that report on events in New Orleans, Martí portrays the Crescent City and the US South as the setting for deadly violence and the protracted struggle between brutality and civility. In “Una pelea de premio” (Prizefight), Martí observes the “barbarous” behavior at a boxing match outside New Orleans on February 7, 1882. In “El asesinato de los italianos” (The Lynching of the Italians), published in La Nación in 1891, he describes a historic episode of ethnocide and corruption within the city itself. Such scenes of southern barbarity warn Martí’s Latin American readers against servile imitation of the North American model of progress, as they condemn US aggressions committed within and beyond the country’s national boundaries.