By: Georgina Suárez Hernández 

Lucy Parsons's visit to New York helped to modify the early vision Martí had about the events of May 4^th, 1886 in Haymarket square of Chicago.   

Parsons traveled throughout the whole country spreading the truth of her partner's participation and the rest of those involved in the faked and extensive trial against them. The Haymarket events which ended up on an open battle were transformed into a conspiracy against workers whose only crime was to have organized a protest act against police violence unleashed during the act of May 1^st that year. 

The main suspects were presented from that point on as vicious beasts. Of hundreds of arrested workers, eight were taken to trial and seven convicted to be hanged. Four of them were ultimately executed. The verdict was passed on August 20^th, 1886. 

In the first three chronicles in this respect, Martí had offered an assessment of Chicago events influenced by the distorted image spread around by the press, the presentation of false witnesses and the selection of a cooperative jury. 

The conspiracy against those men was so big that spread confusion in people of deep thinking and independent as Martí. He himself defined it later as: "Ah, the press, the rich classes, the fear to this frightening rising of our justice has forged the truth in that ridiculous and immoral process!” 

The reasons heard from Lucy Parsons's lips should have moved Martí. But it’s also truth that before his eyes were unveiled at the same time the great machination which presented those men as members of a conspiracy advocating terror and blood thirst.  

Although in the first moments Martí said that those accused "... urged the slaughter and sowed it with their hand"..., when they were hung on November 11^th, 1887 a change of attitude had already dawned in him and he didn't thought of them as guilty. For this reason he condemned the true causers who "... they judge the social crimes without to know and to think the historical causes that they were born judge social crimes without knowing and thinking of the historical causes from which they were born neither the impulses of generosity that produce them"... 

A big shock was originated not only in North American territory, but in the entire world. The worthy Cuban respected the firmness and courage in those processed during the montage of the justice caricature staged in the American court of law. Probably Martí’s chronicles presented in North American Scenes contributed to some extent to denounce the truth about the facts. 

When Martí spoke of "those aggressive leagues of industrials, privileged by the favoritism of law" he qualified in just a few words the North American political system. This system exerts its authority through institutions capable to work as instrument to stage provocations and later exercise pressure on juries so they judge to its will. 

These events contributed to ripe Martí’s conception on classes struggle. ... “those strikes which are already open battles of thinking rather than wage demands...” he expressed in overt support to the leaders of the confused Chicago. 

And in a sharp position he expressed referring the application of the justice in the United States that... "This republic, due to the immeasurable cult to wealth, has fallen, with none of the obstacles of tradition, in the inequality, injustice, and violence of monarchic countries." 

Cubasi Translation Staff