Exile and Revolution by Poyo Gerald E.;

Author:Poyo, Gerald E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5. José Martí (standing, center) with cigar workers at the Martínez Ybor cigar factory in Ybor City, Florida, July 1892. José D. Poyo is second from Martí’s right, and Serafín Sánchez is on Poyo’s right. From Guillermo de Zéndegui, Ambito de Martí (Havana: P. Fernández y Cia, 1954).

The day ended with a general community gathering at the Círculo de Trabajadores, where some 1,500 people set out in procession across town to the Liceo Cubano. As a correspondent for Patria noted, the march demonstrated “the unity of the oppressed, of the disinherited, of all free men.” That evening so many went to the Liceo Cubano that the assembly moved outdoors. The following morning, Martí, Poyo, Roloff, Sánchez, and Rivero set off for Ocala and then Jacksonville and St. Augustine to spread the ideas that had been reaffirmed in Tampa and Key West.62

Baseball offered the PRC another source of revenue. Cuban baseball teams first organized into a semi-professional league in Key West in 1887. When Francisco Díaz Silveira, a young poet who published nationalist verses in El Yara, formed a baseball team called Cuba, Poyo’s son Francisco joined as catcher. Another Cuban nationalist, Luis Acosta, founded the Esperanza baseball club, and Frank Bolio, who had been on the committee that invited Martí to Key West, organized three additional teams: Habana, Fe and the Key West Greys. The players on the Greys were Anglo-American.63 War veteran and cigar selector Alejandro Rodríguez and his wife Eva Adan managed Fe. League organizers also approached Gato about using some of his land for a baseball field on the south side of the Key, close to the beach. He agreed, and they built stands for spectators, put up a fence, and launched the first formal baseball season in 1888/1889. Teams played on Monday afternoons, since local laws prohibited professional contests on Sundays.

On one of his visits to Key West, Martí accompanied Poyo to a game that pitted the Cuba baseball club against a team of Americans. At that game, 19-year-old “Tinti” Molina hit a home run that won the game for the Cubans. Martí congratulated Molina after the game, telling him that the victory was a good omen for the coming struggle. Martí so inspired Molina that the young player later smuggled messages to activists when he traveled to join a team in Matanzas.64 In 1896, after war began, a community group, Sociedad de Instrucción y Recreo José Martí (José Martí Educational and Recreational Society), organized a formal championship designed to support the war effort.65

On November 7, 1892, Poyo, the PRC Cuerpo de Consejo, and an enthusiastic multitude greeted Martí at the docks as he arrived for his third visit to Key West. In September he had traveled to the Dominican Republic, where General Gómez formally accepted an appointment as the revolution’s supreme military chief. The Key West consejo heard Martí’s briefings about his conversations with Gómez and agreed to accelerate its fund-raising efforts. On December 4, Poyo announced to the community that Gómez had accepted Martí’s offer to serve as commander in chief of the insurgent army.

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