One morning in the 19th century, in a sugar plantation in the western interior of Cuba, a boy saw a file of African slaves walking naked to be examined. But that was not all; the boy also saw the dead body of a black man hanging from a tree. His boss had hanged him.

We do not know if this scene actually happened, but the cruelty that underscores it is part of history. A poem written by Jos Marti, the prominent poet in the world of Latin American l