Enrique Piñeyro, in addition to his fairly objective literary criticism, also devoted himself to political discourse, more through dissertation than harangue, especially during his period as an exile, which began in 1869 in New York City. More than speeches, his addresses were lectures that, while educating the exile community, inspired a patriotic spirit that was reflected in fundraising.

His surviving texts display an eloquent simplicity that eludes the rhetoric of Romanticism and other literary schools. They are generally due to commemorative occasions such as the dates of October 10 and November 27, the Yara independence uprising in 1868, and the execution of medical students in 1871, respectively.

At the Cuban Club of New York, he gave two lectures in which he lavishly addressed the historical figures of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín. With certain impressionist touches and an economy of rhetorical resources, yet with a wealth of terminology, he managed to convey the essence of both personalities, who symbolized so much for Latin American independence and for Cuba’s own perspective of freedom.

However, the end of both Bolívar and San Martín, in oblivion bordering on betrayal, as well as the human passions that weighed down the ideals of Latin American independence, are placed at an important level by Piñeyro’s discourse, which could constitute a rather deterrent element to undertaking a new conflict. This also connects with his postulates, common to a significant sector of the bourgeoisie.

Manuel de la Cruz recounted: “When Piñeyro takes possession of the podium, he is the statue of oral perfection who moves like an actor and speaks with all the resources of human song. His style takes on a new life, it is dressed with all the notes that the human voice can combine; the rhythm of his ideas, when modulated by his throat, transforms each paragraph into a symphony of thoughts. He is a statue that petrifies his listeners, turning them into statues of awe and emotion; a statue that fills the air, as if it were a mirror reflecting a gallery of statues, with admirably delineated profiles and plastic visions of social states. He is a prodigious magician who, with gesture and word, makes tangible the pictures drawn and colored in his mind: now it is the energetic profile of the great Florentine bard, which he traces in the void with a gesture, which is seen like the profile drawn with a match on the wall of a dark room; now it is the picture of “an era, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the Girondins intoning La Marseillaise around the guillotine, which are seen at a glance like the painting of a mirage that, with the speed of lightning, crystallized in the ether in marble bas-relief. Piñeyro is the only one in Cuba who possesses the secret of these aesthetic marvels.”

This vivid portrait of Piñeyro’s oratory shows that the author was not a political orator in the full sense of the word. Although political and historical themes were the subject of his dissertations, the underlying intention was not so clearly to persuade of the need for struggle, but rather to illustrate national history and reality with a careful aesthetic chiseling.