Across Latin America and the Caribbean, intellectual and political leaders have often used ideas about race to craft arguments and policies regarding national identity. National identity is constructed by each nation differently depending on their history. In Cuba and Haiti, two different national cases in which ideas about racial identity shaped the emergence of nationalist movements and discourses. With Jose Marti’s “My Race” and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s “An Unthinkable History,” Cuba’s ideology of “racelessness” and Haiti’s idea that their history was “unthinkable” emerge. Jose Marti, a Cuban a writer, revolutionist, and national hero, founded the newspaper Patria, in which he wrote many of his key articles directed towards Cuban Independence.