José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was a political activist and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence from the Spanish Empire in the 19th century and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence". From adolescence on, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt.
Born in Havana, Spanish Empire, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He traveled extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban émigré community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on 19 May 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works include a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and a children's magazine.
He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers. One of those newspapers, Patria, was an important instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, many of his verses from the book Versos Sencillos were adapted to the patriotic song "Guantanamera", which has become a prominent representative song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Martí's ideology became a major driving force in Cuban politics. He is also regarded as Cuba's "martyr".
Life
Early life, Cuba: 1853–70
José Julián Martí Pérez was born on 28 January 1853, in Havana, at 41 Paula Street, to Spanish parents, a Valencian father, Mariano Martí Navarro, and Leonor Pérez Cabrera, a native of the Canary Islands. Martí was the older brother to seven sisters: Leonor, Mariana, María del Carmen, María del Pilar, Rita Amelia, Antonia and Dolores. He was baptized on 12 February in Santo Ángel Custodio church. When he was four, his family moved from Cuba to Valencia, Spain, but two years later they returned to the island where they enrolled José at a local public school, in the Santa Clara neighborhood where his father worked as a prison guard.In 1865, he enrolled in the Escuela de Instrucción Primaria Superior Municipal de Varones that was headed by. Mendive was influential in the development of Martí's political philosophies. Also instrumental in his development of a social and political conscience was his best friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez, the son of a wealthy slave-owning family. In April the same year, after hearing the news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Martí and other young students expressed their pain—through group mourning—for the death of a man who had decreed the abolition of slavery in the United States. In 1866, Martí entered the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza where Mendive financed his studies.
Martí signed up at the Escuela Profesional de Pintura y Escultura de La Habana in September 1867, known as Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, to take drawing classes. He hoped to flourish in this area but did not find commercial success. In 1867, he also entered the school of San Pablo, established and managed by Mendive, where he enrolled for the second and third years of his bachelor's degree and assisted Mendive with the school's administrative tasks. In April 1868, his poem dedicated to Mendive's wife, A Micaela. En la Muerte de Miguel Ángel appeared in Guanabacoa's newspaper El Álbum.
When the Ten Years' War broke out in Cuba in 1868, clubs of supporters for the Cuban nationalist cause formed all over Cuba, and José and his friend Fermín joined them. Martí had a precocious desire for the independence and freedom of Cuba. He started writing poems about this vision, while, at the same time, trying to do something to achieve this dream. In 1869, he published his first political writings in the only edition of the newspaper El Diablo Cojuelo, published by Fermín Valdés Domínguez. That same year he published "Abdala", a patriotic drama in verse form in the one-volume La Patria Libre newspaper, which he published himself. "Abdala" is about a fictional country called Nubia which struggles for liberation. His sonnet "10 de Octubre", later to become one of his most famous poems, was also written during that year, and was published later in his school newspaper.
In March of that year, colonial authorities shut down the school, interrupting Martí's studies. He came to resent Spanish rule of his homeland at an early age; likewise, he developed a hatred of slavery, which was still practiced in Cuba.
On 21 October 1869, aged 16, he was arrested and incarcerated in the national jail, following an accusation of treason and bribery from the Spanish government upon the discovery of a "reproving" letter, which Martí and Fermín had written to a friend when the friend joined the Spanish army. More than four months later, Martí confessed to the charges and was condemned to six years in prison. His mother tried to free her son by writing letters to the government, and his father went to a lawyer friend for legal support, but these efforts failed. Eventually, Martí fell ill; his legs were severely lacerated by the chains that bound him. As a result, he was transferred to another part of Cuba known as Isla de Pinos instead of further imprisonment. Following that, the Spanish authorities decided to exile him to Spain. In Spain, Martí, who was 18 at the time, was allowed to continue his studies with the hopes that studying in Spain would renew his loyalty to Spain.
File:JoseMartiStatue-CentralParkNY.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Statue of José Martí on horseback in New York's Central Park – Anna Hyatt Huntington, 1959
Spain: 1871–74
In January 1871, Martí embarked on the steam ship Guipuzcoa, which took him from Havana to Cádiz. He settled in Madrid in a guesthouse in Desengaño St. #10. Arriving at the capital he contacted fellow Cuban Carlos Sauvalle, who had been deported to Spain a year before Martí and whose house served as a center of reunions for Cubans in exile. On 24 March, Cádiz's newspaper La Soberania Nacional, published Martí's article "Castillo" in which he recalled the sufferings of a friend he met in prison. This article would be reprinted in Sevilla's La Cuestión Cubana and New York's La República. At this time, Martí registered himself as a member of independent studies in the law faculty of the Central University of Madrid. While studying here, Martí openly participated in discourse on the Cuban issue, debating through the Spanish press and circulating documents protesting Spanish activities in Cuba.Martí's maltreatment at the hands of the Spaniards and consequent deportation to Spain in 1871 inspired a tract, Political Imprisonment in Cuba, published in July. This pamphlet's purpose was to move the Spanish public to do something about its government's brutalities in Cuba and promoted the issue of Cuban independence. In September, from the pages of El Jurado Federal, Martí and Sauvalle accused the newspaper La Prensa of having calumniated the Cuban residents in Madrid. During his stay in Madrid, Martí frequented the Ateneo and the National Library, the Café de los Artistas, and the British, Swiss and Iberian breweries. In November he became sick and had an operation, paid for by Sauvalle.
On 27 November 1871, eight medical students, who had been accused of the desecration of a Spanish grave, were executed in Havana. In June 1872, Fermín Valdés was arrested because of the 27 November incident. His sentence of six years of jail was pardoned, and he was exiled to Spain where he reunited with Martí. On 27 November 1872, the printed matter Dia 27 de Noviembre de 1871 written by Martí and signed by Fermín Valdés Domínguez and Pedro J. de la Torre circulated Madrid. A group of Cubans held a funeral in the Caballero de Gracia church, the first anniversary of the medical students' execution.
In 1873, Martí's "A mis Hermanos Muertos el 27 de Noviembre" was published by Fermín Valdés. In February, for the first time, the Cuban flag appeared in Madrid, hanging from Martí's balcony in Concepción Jerónima, where he lived for a few years. In the same month, the Proclamation of the First Spanish Republic by the Cortes on 11 February 1873, reaffirmed Cuba as inseparable to Spain, Martí responded with an essay, The Spanish Republic and the Cuban Revolution, and sent it to the Prime Minister, pointing out that this new freely elected body of deputies that had proclaimed a republic based on democracy had been hypocritical not to grant Cuba its independence. He sent examples of his work to Nestor Ponce de Leon, a member of the Junta Central Revolucionaria de Nueva York, to whom he would express his will to collaborate on the fight for the independence of Cuba.
In May, he moved to Zaragoza, accompanied by Fermín Valdés to continue his studies in law at the Universidad Literaria. The newspaper La Cuestión Cubana of Sevilla, published numerous articles from Martí.
In June 1874, Martí graduated with a degree in Civil Law and Canon Law. In August he signed up as an external student at the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras de Zaragoza, where he finished his degree by October. In November he returned to Madrid and then left to Paris. There he met Auguste Vacquerie, a poet, and Victor Hugo. In December 1874 he embarked from Le Havre for Mexico. Prevented from returning to Cuba, Martí went instead to Mexico and Guatemala. During these travels, he taught and wrote, advocating continuously for Cuba's independence.