excerpt from my final rn:
This conclusion alarms all three paradoxes associated with nationalism. The subjective idea of nationalism, an imagined community that is “conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship”, arrives only when that solidarity is achieved with General Leopoldo’s acceptance of Creole representation. However, the objective defense to this paradox would claim that Cuban nationalism arrived with the spreading of the newspaper on island, and the creation of a shared national conscious. The second paradox, the socio-cultural idea of ‘nationality’, the belonging to a nation, may be misleading during this time when the Spanish leave the island. Many creoles may be conflicted to whether they belong to the Spanish dynastic rule or a Cuba, free of colonialist rule. Lastly, Anderson argues that nationalism is a “philosophical poverty” that “has never produced its own grand thinkers” ; however, emerging at the first shots of the War of 1895 arrives one of the greatest Latin American and Cuban grand thinkers, Jose Marti.
