José Martí, Cuba's National Hero
150th anniversary of his birth (January 28th, 2003)
José Julian Martí (1853-1895)
Cuban poet, essayist, journalist and statesman, who
became the symbol of Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain and
promoted better understanding among Latin American nations.
José Martí was born in Havana as the son of poor Spanish
immigrants. His primary school teacher Rafael María de Mendive persuaded
Martí's father to allow him to study at secondary school. He attended the
Instituto de Havana (1866-69), and worked on the underground newspapers El
Diablo Cojuelo and La Patria Libre.
At the age of sixteen, Martí was arrested for his
anti-colonialist ideas, accused of high treason to the Spanish crown and
sentenced to six year forced labor; chained from waist to ankle breaking
rocks
After a year he was exiled to Spain, where he studied at
the Universities of Madrid and Saragossa. He graduated in law in 1873, and
gained a degree in philosophy and letters a year later. In Spain he
published El presidio de Cuba in 1871, describing the horrors of being a
political prisoner in Cuba at the time.
Between 1874 and 1895 (the year of his death), Martí
visited Cuba three times, once under a false name.
In 1874, Martí wrote to his friend Fermín Valdés: "The
truth is, Fermín, that I no longer live except for my land, but a thousand
times I hold back what that love for her demands so it does not seem that
I do it out of self-interest or to win fame."
In 1875, Martí moved to Mexico and wrote for Revista
Universal. He then taught literature and philosophy at the University of
Guatemala and returned to Cuba where he worked in a law office until 1879,
when he was again deported to Spain.
In 1881 he moved to New York City, where he worked as an
editor, journalist or foreign correspondent for several magazines,
including the New York Sun, El Partido Liberal, La Opinión Nacional, La
Nación, La República, El Economista Americano, and La Opinión Pública.
In New York, Martí founded the newspaper Patria, which
reported on and covered chronicled events in Cuba, and launched a crusade
for Cuba's independence from Spain. In 1894 he founded the Cuban
Revolutionary Party, aimed at supplying independence forces on the island
with arms, resources and men.
Together with the independence war to shake off the
colonial yoke that oppressed Cuba, Martí warned Latin American peoples on
the annexationist intentions of the then nascent US imperialism and waged
yet a far broader battle to prevent the United States from expanding its
dominion south of Río Bravo. In his essay 'Nuestra América' (Our America)
(1891) he emphasized the need to come to terms with the continents
multi-racial identity and the importance to teach thoroughly the history
of America, from the Incas to the present.
Martí also served as consul for Uruguay, Paraguay, and
Argentina.
As early as the 19th century, José Martí opposed a U.S.
plan for the so-called integration of the United States and Latin America.
At the American Republics' Monetary Conference in 1890, it fell to Martí
to oppose this imperialist plan. He wrote some really amazing pages that
are totally valid today, when the US is pushing hard for the
implementation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
In reference to the meeting to which nascent U.S.
imperialism was then inviting the peoples of the Americas in an attempt to
get them to integrate in what it claimed to be a single monetary
agreement, Martí wrote: "you have to look for the hidden agenda in every
meeting among nations."
Martí also said "When trading with a pushy,
overconfident nation to be so accommodating as to appear weak might not be
the best way of saving our countries from the dangers to which a
reputation for weakness has left us exposed. Wisdom lies not in living up
to a reputation for weakness but rather in seizing the opportunity to show
ourselves strong without danger."
Martí's three major poetry collections were Ismaelillo
(1882), Versos sencillos (1891), and Versos libres, written in the 1880s,
but published posthumously in 1913.
Martí returned to Cuba on April 11th, 1895 and was
killed in combat one month later at Dos Rios on May 19, 1895.
RHC
