#friendsofjosemarti

In Death of a Bureaucrat, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1966 film, he introduced an early criticism of the Cult of Personality surrounding the image of José Martí.

In Diego Rivera’s “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park,” found in the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, we can see José Martí hiding behind Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz’s, elegantly dressed wife and daughter and next to a young Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Martí returned to Mexico in 1894, during the Cuban revolt against Spain in desperate need of financial support. He sought an audience with Porfirio Diaz and gave a speech preaching the necessity of an independent Cuba from the hands of a “corrupted Spain,” a struggle Mexico also had to endure.

Díaz’s dictatorship ended in 1911 after he tried to rig the election. One might wonder why Rivera, a revolutionary, placed Martí, another revolutionary hero, behind the opulence of Díaz’s daughter and wife.