José Martí: "The Apostle"

José Martí today: Poet, political thinker and writer, and independence fighter, Martí is basically the George Washington of Cuba. He embodies Cuban poetry, nationalism, and sacrifice more than any other figure, past or present, for he died fighting for Cuba's independence from Spain. Because he was the principal figure in the final independence movement and therefore was long deceased when Fidel Castro launched his revolution, Martí is a universal, almost apolitical symbol to all Cubans, including the exile communities in Spain, Miami, and elsewhere. For example, the airport in Havana is called José Martí International Airport, while the anti-Castro radio station beaming from south Florida is Radio Martí. In Cuba, there is no town or city that does not have a statue or bust of Martí [see the statue of him in Cental Park in Old Havana], or a street or theater named after him. Havana and Santiago de Cuba also have a number of billboards featuring his image and words, and the national money includes a paper bill and coin with his image.

A Brief Biography: José Julian Martí was born in Havana in 1853.  As a boy and adolescent the precocious Martí wrote poetry and prose and eventually founded the anti-colonial newspaper La patria libre [The Free Homeland], for which the Spanish put him in jail in 1869 due to its nationalist and independence-minded orientation. Martí was then exiled to Spain, where he published El presidio político en Cuba , his first direct attack against Spain and a rallying cry for independence. While in Spain, Martí managed to obtain a law degree at the University of Zaragoza in 1874. Afterward he traveled, taught and worked as a journalist in Europe, Mexico and Central America. Martí returned to Cuba in 1878 but was exiled again in 1879 for his hardened stance against the Spanish. In the following years Martí lived in the United States, mostly in New York, and he became the leader of the Cuban exile community. Like Fidel Castro in 1956, Martí, accompanied by other revolutionary fighters such as the eventual commander General Máximo Gómez, invaded Cuba in 1895 but was killed a month later during a minor battle with Spanish forces at Dos Ríos in the east. He is buried in Santiago de Cuba.

A contemportary of the great Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, Martí was integral to the development of Modernism in Spanish literature, especially to the Latin American canon. Martí had a very simple, plain style, and his imagery was intensely personal. Martí was perhaps better known for his prose — mainly essays railing against the Spanish occupation and calling on Cubans to rise up. Regardless of what he wrote, he did so prolifically — his collected works amount to some 70 volumes.

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