With a Stroke of the Chaveta to be Screened at Cena Martiana

On Monday January 28, 2013 The Bronx Music Heritage Center will host El Club Cubano Inter-americano's "Cena Maritiana," a cultural dinner honoring the birth of José Martí, one of the great leaders of the Cuban & Puerto Rican struggle for independence from Spain. Grito Productions is proud to screen WITH A STROKE OF THE CHAVETA as part of the evening's activities.

Tabaqueros (cigarmakers) and their lectores (readers) were a backbone of political and economic support for the cause of liberation. José Martí knew this well and called the platforms where cigar factory readers sat, "advanced pulpits of liberty."

It was to an audience of cigar workers in Tampa who Martí delivered his famous lines in 1891, "Let us rise up...and place around the star of our new flag this formula of love triumphant: With all, and for the good of all."

Guest speakers at the Cena Martiana will be Dr. Nancy Mirabal and Tomás Fernández Robaina.

Mirabal is Associate Professor at San Francisco State Unversity and has been widely published on the history of Afro-Diasporic communities. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled Hemispheric Notions: Diaspora, Masculinity, and the Racial Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1933. Robaina is Investigator at la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí and Professor at the University of Havana.

RSVP: http://josemarticlubcubano.eventbrite.com (space is limited)

El Club Cubano Inter-Americano was founded by Afro-Cubans in New York City in 1946. After organizing a successful event at Town Hall in honor of the birth of black Cuban General Antonio Maceo, the group decided they should form a club that would welcome Cubans and other Latin Americans in all of their diversity. El Club Cubano still exists, reinvigorated by children of some of the original members.