The fact that En Los Estados Unidos possesses the narrative force to stir up the latent sense of wonder in the reader over the seemingly mundane object of a bridge is what makes this passage so supremely non-tedious. While passing through the iconic landscape of New York, Marti is overcome with “agradecimiento” for his fellow man, the architects whose pencils delineated the skyscrapers towering over his head, and goes so far as be “religiosamente conmovida” by the vast forms and structural aesthetic of the bridge. We might agree that the Brooklyn Bridge is a fine and useful structure, but Jose Marti reminds us, in language that bowls you over with the force of its excitement, that this bridge is one of the finest expressions of humanity.
Some may think it is merely some ugly slabs of concrete put together in response to a practical need. But: a human being does not have to feel dwarfed by nature when standing before an “inmenso” and “gigantesco” structure of our own creation. With our ingenuity we can build to the scale of mountain-sized mammoths and fashion objects of cyclopean proportions. Nor do human beings have to feel that their lives are so fleeting when we can leave such a triumphant mark of our presence. Look at how the foundations of the bridge “muerden la roca en el fondo del rio”: these structures are rooted to the earth.
But there is also evidence the Marti considers these structures not accomplishments of humanity at large, but profoundly American accomplishments. The fact that this reading package opened with an ode to a bridge recalled another traveler who famously recorded his impressions of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, who I remember opining that bridges were America’s cathedrals. This identification with bridges may have been part of the developing American psyche that sought to differentiate itself from Europe: it saw itself as vigorous, honest, and hard-working. As a Latin American, Jose Marti is also turning away from Europe, and venerating what is essentially American. He marvels at the spectacle of Coney Island and writes swooningly about the iconic Statue of Liberty. However, how Latin Americans will negotiate their own identity in relation to this northern titan is unclear. Other than the Americas sharing the ideal of liberty, which Marti calls “la madre del mundo nuevo,” he does not indicate exactly how this United States he describes relates to the nascent literary public in Latin America who would have been reading this text.
