José Martí was the most universal Cuban intellectual of his time. His relationship with the Law was formed even before he studied that career at the University of Zaragoza, since his defined independence position led him, from adolescence, to be interested in legal issues, as evidenced in  El Diablo Cojuelo,  the newspaper that inaugurated to analyze the colonial situation of Cuba. ¹   On the other hand, in the unfair trial to which he was subjected for the juvenile letter that he and Fermín Valdés-Domínguez Quintanó wrote to Carlos de Castro y Castro, the adolescent Martí, with vibrant oratory, managed to exonerate his fellow student from the guilt of having written said letter. It was, without a doubt, his first performance in that professional field, carried out long before he became a lawyer. Later, exiled from his homeland, he studied Law first in Madrid and then in Zaragoza in the early 1970s, studies that culminated in 1874 and were integrated into his enormous culture and did not cease to be present in his extensive and fruitful work. of life and writing. Although he did not practice as such, the legal profession became an inalienable part of his culture. It is not possible to ignore that Martí had a defined legal culture , as well as a literary, artistic, historical or political one.

Of course, the notion of  legal culture  has to be understood both from the concept of  culture , that is, from a culturological perspective, and from Law. In contemporary times, culturological studies —or culturology— have been acquiring a large-scale development, since, from the perspective of culturology and based on a dialectical conception, culture cannot be seen as a reduced field of exclusively artistic productions. , but, above all, as  the wide field in which the most varied human axiological-communicative activities intersect, which requires conceiving culture as an enormous macro-system of communication of values ​​. ² According to this theoretical perspective, culture is also the mode of existence of social dynamics: the family, the organization of work, the productive process itself, tradition, education and the phenomena of the social superstructure, have their existence within within the framework of culture and only within it.

Conceived in this way, culture reveals itself as a dynamic and creative factor of society, especially in what refers to the organization and development of the production of goods, but also in what has to do with the exchange of them and, even with the structure of the family. Within culture as a communication macrosystem, it is possible to distinguish structured subsystems that are specifically related to a sphere of social life —economic, political, institutional, etc.— One of the most important axiological-communicative subsystems of society from Its historical stage is that of legal culture, which is responsible for producing, communicating, transmitting and developing specifically legal signs and values ​​within the framework of a concrete-historical society. This system is dealt with by scientific disciplines such as the history of the State and Law. Today, legal culture is the subject of complete courses in universities in various countries, such as Chile.

Thus, culture at the present moment is conceived as a multifunctional system, and must be understood not only in the context of the complex existence of a single human entity (a nation, for example), but it is also capable of being considered as the realization of supranational interrelations. This is the specific case of the culture of Latin America, which exists as a unit for many important thinkers, from Simón Bolívar to José Carlos Mariátegui, and, of course, José Martí, for whom this group of peoples was essentially what he called  Our America .. Precisely in his famous essay thus titled, our National Hero establishes the cultural interrelations between our nations as one of the fundamental principles for the defense of our identity. The text of  Nuestra América has been studied a lot and by various authors ; inclusive, it has been valued by Dr. Julio Fernández Bulté from a legal perspective. A conception of Law as something alien to culture and culturology, is an unacceptable idea in contemporary times.

The legal category of nation is linked to a specific culture at a stage of historical development. But also, of course, this category includes specific areas in its axiological system; one of them is especially interesting for this work: legal culture, which also exists in a given time and space. Among the philosophers of Law in Latin America, Alberto M. Binder is one of those who has devoted attention to this category in the current Latin American context.

The legal culture of a country —and of a person within it— is not a watertight and isolated compartment. On the contrary, legal culture, like general culture in its broadest sense, is an immense sounding board, so that an idea can cross borders. So that one of the basic spheres of all history of legal culture has to do with the way in which a society assimilates legal ideas generated within another. That is, for example, the meaning of interesting studies by Paolo Becchi about the diffusion of Napoleon's Code in Germany in the 19th century.

In the specific case of José Martí , according to what was expressed by Binder, both the legal culture and the mode of existence of a specific society and time converge in him, which operates on him as a social individual, as well as the culture legal specific to a legal professional. This last point is of great importance. Legal culture also constitutes a non-institutional space that constitutes a zone of mutual relationship between the legal system as a conceptual systemic construction, and the dynamism of the social process. Binder relies on a hermeneutic perspective —not only that of Gadamer , but that of the Frankfurt philosophical school.

José Martí 's legal culture has two components —external and internal— and, as has already been pointed out, it has barely been investigated. The breadth and complexity of Martí's legal culture is very great, and it also has to do with the fact that he was in direct contact with the external legal culture of Cuba, Spain, Guatemala, Venezuela and the United States —countries where he lived for extended periods—, but also with that of France, due to his deep knowledge of the general culture of that nation, evident in his journalistic chronicles about that country, which include many analyzes of parliamentary life and even relative to the Criminal Law of said country. ⁴

It was the great Argentine essayist, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada , one of the Marti researchers who has insisted most forcefully on the importance of Martí having a university education as a lawyer. Martínez Estrada does not stop pointing out that the study of Law has been of all the knowledge acquired by Martí in Spain, the one that can be considered the most finished and made for useful purposes, although he will not exercise it.

The various references that Martí makes clear , throughout the work, to a series of philosophers who dealt with Law are very interesting. One of several examples is that of John Locke, who dealt with Natural Law. He also references Thomas Hobbes.. For this English philosopher, natural law was one of his topics of interest. Martí's training in legal culture was systematized and professionally oriented at the University of Zaragoza —he had begun to study in Madrid, but the climate affected him too much and he moved— . The Law, in Spain, had formed a very important part of the culture, and, also, had been characterized by its conservatism. Even at the time when the Enlightenment transforms a series of views on society. Spain was slow to experience the impulse that the Age of Enlightenment brought to the evolution of Law and, in particular, of the philosophy of Law, which in France, for example, produced decisive changes in perspective that began with the Enlightenment, which took time to enter Spain, it was, however, a gigantic driver of change in Europe. The question of Law had been the subject of philosophical thought throughout European history. But in the s. XVIII had become a topic of philosophical reflection. One of the most prominent encyclopedists wasDennis Diderot , one of the thinkers who most confronted the dying feudalism in France. Martí read it and refers to it on several occasions. ⁵

Another great Enlightenment philosopher read by Martí was Juan Jacobo Rousseau . ⁶ To the ideas of the Enlightenment, those of classical German philosophy and Romanticism are added. Martí knew Kant's thought and refers to this eminent philosopher in different circumstances. ⁷  Classical German philosophy represented an important development in the field of natural law. The French Revolution had, of course, a great impact on the Law. And Martí studied a lot about her. Thus, for example, he alludes several times to Mirabeau,   who was one of the politicians of the French Revolution who paid the most attention to the concept of nation. Another French revolutionary alluded to by Martí is Emmanuel Sieyés, mentioned in  Our America he studied, he must have been known by the Apostle. Martí also mentions in his works Friedrich Karl von Savigny, one of the leading figures of Law in the era of legal Romanticism. The moment in which he mentions it, testifies to the interest that, even as a journalist, Martí had for Law. ⁸ , ⁹   whose reflections on the Third Estate, that is, the non-aristocratic elements of pre-revolutionary French society, were very important, to the extent that they promoted certain events. in the early days of the French Revolution. Legal Romanticism, due to its proximity to the time when Martí¹⁰

It is important to consider Marti's vision of legal culture, and, within it, of Public Law, at least in a very panoramic way, since a detailed study of this subject would require a study of the essential iuris-philosophical foundation. In this section, the possible directions of linking Marti's ideas with certain lines of European thought have been outlined. We must also consider Martí's relationship with Krausism. The German philosopher, disciple of Hegel , Karl Christian Friedrich Krause , was a philosopher of second rank in Europe, and this implies that in the first studies on the formation of Marti's thought, his knowledge of the work of Marti was not given enough importance. Krause and the Krausists.

Krause was not an important philosopher in Germany, but his thought gave very rich fruits in Spain and Latin America, where his thought contributed a lot to the development of ideas. Krausism was an unquestionable influence on many Spanish intellectuals, which gave rise to Spanish Krausism, an important movement that tried to renew the decadent Spain of the second half of the s. XIX. You have to think that Krausism dominated many of the ideas of the most prominent intellectuals in Spain. Although it was based on principles of Hegel's objective idealist philosophy, its ethical —and even legal— projection in Spanish jurists such as Julián Sanz del Río, Gumersindo de Azcárate, Manuel Pedregal y Cañedo, Adolfo González Posada, Joaquín Costa, Pedro Dorado Montero and others—was very important for the formation of Martí's ideas. Krause also reflected on problems of a juris-philosophical nature. In particular, his notion of sovereignty .

The German philosopher wrote about the possibility of establishing a macro-State, which encompassed all the existing countries in Europe in the s. XIX, in particular in his work  Ideal of humanity for life , where he also points out that every people that maintains its own personality (political sovereignty) must have its own right and state; because as immediate as it is with itself for the realization of its human ends, so immediate and inherent is its State as the expression of the conditions relative to the total life of the people itself. The influence of this Krausist conception of political sovereignty is evident in a series of texts by Martí , particularly in his famous and gallant article “Vindication of Cuba”.

The question that Krause touches on a State of great dimensions, must have exerted a certain influence on Marti's notion of the unity of our America. For the Apostle, the Spanish-American unit was a substantial reality, determined by the common origin, the similarity of habits, the identity of historical, economic, social, cultural interests; that point of view led him to also examine the question of unity from the angle of Law. However, this did not mean for Martí that he should return to total political integrity, nor that a new country should be artificially “constructed”, made up of all the republics that emerged from the wars of independence at the beginning of the 19th century. What it was about for the Master,

It is convenient to dwell on Marti's ideas on International Law, both to establish that, in effect, the lawyer José Martí, although he did not practice strictly as such, did reveal a legal perspective in his works on a series of important issues. The problem of the projection of Martí's thought in terms of International Law cannot be strange to any attentive reader of his work, and even less so to a connoisseur of his biography. Once again, the Law studies carried out by Martí should not be forgotten. It is difficult to think that his training as a jurist is not manifested, in some way, in his texts, particularly those where he addresses issues related to the contemporary situation and history of Hispanic America. But, in addition, the sphere of Public International Law,

It is necessary to add a matter of vital importance. José Martí was not the first Hispanic American to reflect on international law. On the contrary, another prominent figure, the Venezuelan Andrés Bello , dealt intensely with the subject, including writing a text on International Law, which was published by him in 1832 and republished in Venezuela in 1954, when it was published. They edited his complete works. Martí 's admiration for Andrés Bello, also a jurist and equally outstanding thinker of America, explains why they also coincide in a series of juris-philosophical ideas, since Bello and Martíthey shared the same passion and the same desire for the future for our America. It should not be neglected to point out that, in this line of affinities between Bello —the first great thinker in Latin America to deal with the subject of international law— and Martí, they had a similar position in that Bello expressed complete confidence in the future of the peoples of America.

This does not mean, moreover, that it is assumed that Martí has ​​read  Bello's International Law  , since it would not be so easy to fully prove it, despite the coincidences that can be noticed; but, equally, it would be unwise to neglect a possibility in that direction, particularly due to Martí 's stay in Venezuela, and the fact that, since Martí should act as a consular diplomat for several Latin American countries in New York, the hypothesis that that he has professionally turned to the pages of the founding and most prestigious text of International Law in Latin America, particularly during his participation in the Pan-American Conference, in which he represented Uruguay.

In Marti's texts, the first characteristic is the fact that the most frequently referred to international relations are, as expected, those established between one or more Latin American countries and the United States. This, of course, fully agrees with fundamental axes of Marti's concern and foresight. In any case, the number of texts that allude to international relations between Latin American countries with each other or with Europe is less frequent.

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Notes:

¹  Cf. José Martí:  Complete Works , t. 1 p. 31 et seq. Ed. Social Sciences, Havana, 1975.
²  Cf. Luis Álvarez and Olga García Yero:  Cultural thought in the Cuban 19th century . Ed. Social Sciences, Havana, pp. 11-28.
³  Cf. OC, t. 6, p. 20.
⁴  Cf. OC, t. 4. See there, among many other possibilities, the chronicles contained in pp. 355-380.
⁵  Cf. José Martí:  Complete Works , t. 5 p. 119; t. 20, p. 202 and t. 21, p. 217.
⁶  Cf. José Martí:  Complete Works , t. 5 p. 365; t. 6, p. 395; t. 8, p. 244; t. 14, p. 205, t. 22, pp. 246 and 316 and t. 23, p. 254.
⁷ Cf. José Martí: OC, t. 12, p. 306 ; t. 13, p. 211 ; t. 19, p. 367 and 369; t. 21, p. 48, 64, 65, 387 ; t. 22, p. 128, 140.
⁸  Cf. José Martí: OC, t. 4, p. 269 ​​; t. 15, p. 410 and 417; t. 21, p. 410.
⁹  Cf. José Martí: OC, t. 6, p. 17.
¹⁰  Chr. José Martí: OC, t. 23, p. 95.