Hostos at the Ateneo de Madrid

Eugenio María de Hostos, Woodcut, Lorenzo Homar, 1961
Source: Sala Eugenio María de Hostos. Una invitación para visitar la Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 2009

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Eugenio María de Hostos, one of the leading lights of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean during the 19^th Century. (Tomorrow, the Puerto Rican government's offices will be closed in honor of Hostos’ birthday.)  A Puerto Rican by birth, Hostos was an American, in the broadest sense of that word, by choice.  He saw in the countries of the Antilles-especially Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic-islands sharing both cultural bonds and political challenges.  His life was dedicated to the independence of the islands from any foreign power, whether in Madrid or in Washington. 

One of Hostos’ clearest arguments in favor of Cuba and Puerto Rico’s independence from Spain was delivered in 1868 in the heart of Spanish intellectual life, El Ateneo de Madrid.  Only a few months earlier, Puerto Rico’s first significant attempt to achieve independence died in the coffee-producing hills near Lares.  Meanwhile, in Cuba, insurgents had started a long and costly war that would do little to resolve the island’s colonial status.  Hostos’ speech at the Ateneo is a pointed and elegant attack against Spanish colonialism and its impact on the peoples of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.  Spain itself was convulsed by revolution in 1868, and it was Hostos who exposed the hypocrisy of Spaniards who preached liberalism at home but imposed colonialism abroad.

Thanks to the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College/CUNY, Hostos’ speech at the Ateneo has been translated into English.  This is part of the college’s great work in preserving his legacy and making some of his work available to English-speakers.  The site is a great place to start to learn about this important figure in the history of the Americas and his life's work in favor of freedom.