Martí in Film: From Hagiography to Humanization

Abstract

This article explores film representations of José Martí in three periods of Cuban history: the Republic, Fidel Castro’s Revolution, and the post-Soviet era. These three periods witnessed an evolution in the cinematic use and exploitation of Martí’s symbolic capital. While the Republic endowed Martí with a religious and romantic aura, which turned him into a sacred hero, ICAIC filmmakers systematically resorted to Martí to manufacture a version of the past that would justify the new revolutionary order. Under State control, Cuban cinema in the 1960s and 1970s underscored one of the more recurrent ideas in the political imagery of the Revolution: Martí prefigures and announces Castro, who, in turn, incarnates Martí. The most recent representations, however, aim at demystifying and, therefore, humanizing, the Cuban hero’s image.