Leo Casey wrote: >In fact, of course, there has always been an anti-imperialist strain in >American politics, and not just among African-Americans (remember Mark Twain >and William Jennings Bryan?). Sure, I myself have written about Mark Twain on this list some time ago. Twain learned his anti-imperialist lesson the hard way: ***** Mark Twain on Cuba's Anti-Imperialist Square By Jim Zwick <http://www.marktwain.about.com/arts/marktwain/library/weekly/aa000404a.htm> On April 3, the Jos� Mart� Open Anti-Imperialist Square was inaugurated in Havana, Cuba. Built during the crisis in diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba over the fate of the young shipwreck survivor, Elian Gonzalez, the square is named for a Cuban nationalist leader and will eventually include monuments to a number of other national and socialist heroes from around the world, including Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. The immediate circumstances of the creation of the Square, and the presence of Elian Gonzalez's father at its inauguration, might lead some to believe that the plan to include a monument to Mark Twain is pure propaganda. But, like the proposal made in the Philippines two years ago for a statue of Mark Twain to honor his support for the Philippine Revolution, this gesture has its roots in Mark Twain's anti-imperialist writings. Jos� Mart� lived in New York after being exiled by Spanish authorities in Cuba in 1879. His writings inspired the Cuban revolution from Spain that began in 1895 and he was killed by the Spanish after he returned to Cuba that year. Three years later, the United States intervened in that revolution with "Cuba Libre!" one of its most potent slogans. Observing the Spanish-American War from Europe, Mark Twain wrote, "I have never enjoyed a war -- even in written history -- as I am enjoying this one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is the first time it has been done." The outcome of that war was a bitter disappointment, though. After reading the Treaty of Paris that concluded the war, Twain realized that the United States had no intention of freeing Puerto Rico, Guam or the Philippines. On his return to the United States in October of 1900, he declared himself an anti-imperialist in dockside interviews and soon became a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York. He remained an officer of either that branch or the national Anti-Imperialist League until his death in 1910. The U.S. colonization of the Philippines became the primary focus of Mark Twain's anti-imperialist writings in the early 1900s but he also paid close attention to what was happening in Cuba. Although the Spanish-American War was ostensibly fought to "free Cuba," some in the U.S. Congress thought that the island should be annexed by the United States along with the other former Spanish colonies. In February 1901, Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut introduced a compromise measure that would give Cuba nominal independence but forbid it from forming international alliances and reserved for the United States the right to intervene militarily at times of political instability or whenever Cuba could not pay its international debts. The Platt Amendment became law in the United States and its inclusion in the Cuban Constitution was made a requirement of the country's independence. It defined U.S.-Cuban relations for the next three decades and set the stage for the next Cuban revolution that would bring Fidel Castro to power. Mark Twain was an early critic of the Platt Amendment. In "The Stupendous Procession," a piece he was writing in February of 1901, the month the amendment was introduced, he described the U.S. Congress as ready to chain Cuba in a new set of leg-irons and hand-cuffs. In "As Regards Patriotism," written in 1902, he used the promise to free Cuba as an example of what "training" in the country's old democratic principles had accomplished, and contrasted it with the results of a "short training" under the new imperial conditions: "Training made us nobly anxious to free Cuba; training made us give her a noble promise [of independence]; training has enabled us to take it back." In its report of the inauguration of the Anti-Imperialist Square in Havana, the Reuters news service quoted Cuban youth leader Otto Rivera's explanation of the planned inclusion of monuments to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain: "Our war is against the empire which enslaves and oppresses, not against the American people who build and love." Instead of dismissing this gesture as propaganda, the American people would do well by reading what Mark Twain had to say about the severely limited independence granted to Cuba in 1902. "The empire" is not a fiction invented by creative Cuban speech writers, but something Mark Twain condemned as it was being established at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The creation of the Jos� Mart� Open Anti-Imperialist Square in Havana is a reminder that the present conflict grew from those roots, and that even during the worst of times Cubans and Americans can agree upon Mark Twain. Jim Zwick ***** Yoshie
