With flags, band music and thunderous oratory, Cuba last week celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of José Martí, the island's liberator. A ballet, headed by Cuba-born Alicia Alonso, performed nightly in an outdoor theater; 7,000 torch-bearing paraders marched at midnight; schoolchildren dropped a thousand white flowers at the base of the Marti monument. For a week, Cubans laid aside strong talk about their strong man, General Fulgencio Batista, and gave themselves over to honoring one of Latin America's greatest, though least known, historical figures.
On a Chain Gang. The man Cubans revere as their apostle of independence was...