We can call him The Teacher, the National Hero of Cuba, the Apostle, or the Major General of the Liberation Army who fell at Dos Ríos, but everyone will immediately recognize José Julián Martí Pérez, that compatriot who in just 42 years forever illuminated the lives of Cubans.
This January 28th would have marked the 173rd anniversary of his birth in 1853 at 41 Paula Street in Old Havana, the firstborn son of Mariano Martí and Leonor Pérez, natives of Valencia and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, where he lived with his sisters Leonor, Mariana, María del Carmen, María del Pilar, Rita Amelia, Antonia, and Dolores.
Much could be written about the poet, writer, journalist, thinker, and, above all, the revolutionary who was able to unite the forces that participated in the Ten Years' War against Spanish colonialism, organize the Necessary War, and found the Cuban Revolutionary Party to lead it. When we look at the Complete Works of José Martí, many people wonder how he could have written so much, not only in quantity but also in its magnificent content, in such a short life during which he suffered imprisonment, exile, traveled to several countries, earned degrees in Civil Law and in Philosophy and Letters from the universities of Madrid and Zaragoza, and never paused in his conspiratorial activity and revolutionary struggles.
At the age of 16, on October 21, 1869, Martí was imprisoned in the National Prison, accused of sedition for writing a letter, along with his close friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez, in which he called another student an apostate for enlisting in the Volunteer Corps of the Spanish colonial regime.On March 4, 1870, he was sentenced to six years in prison, a sentence later commuted to exile on the Isle of Pines, where he arrived on October 13 of that year. On December 18, he left for Havana, and on January 15, 1871, thanks to his parents' efforts, he was deported to Spain.
He studied and graduated from two universities on the Iberian Peninsula. From there, he moved to Paris for a short time. He passed through New York and arrived in Veracruz on February 8, 1875, where he reunited with his family. In Mexico, he established a relationship with Manuel Mercado and met Carmen Zayas Bazán, the Cuban woman who would later become his wife.
From January 2 to February 24, 1877, he lived incognito in Havana as Julián Pérez. He traveled to Guatemala and worked at the Central Normal School as a professor of Literature and History of Philosophy. He returned to Mexico to marry Carmen on December 20 of the same year, returning to Guatemala in early 1878.
After the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) ended, he returned to Cuba on August 31, 1878, settling in Havana. On November 22, his only son, José Francisco, was born. He intensified his conspiratorial activities, becoming one of the founders of the Central Cuban Revolutionary Club, of which he was elected vice president on March 18, 1879. Later, the Cuban Revolutionary Committee, based in New York and presided over by Major General Calixto García, appointed him sub-delegate on the island. On September 17, he was arrested and deported again to Spain on September 25, 1879, for his involvement in the Little War (Guerra Chiquita). From there, he traveled to New York. He reunited with his wife and son on March 3, 1880, and they remained together until October 21, when Carmen and José Francisco returned to Cuba. A week later, he was elected to the Cuban Revolutionary Committee, and he assumed its presidency, replacing Calixto, who had left for Cuba to join the Little War.
Between 1880 and 1890, Martí became known in various countries of the Americas through articles and chronicles he sent from New York to important newspapers: La Opinión Nacional, of Caracas; La Nación, of Buenos Aires; and El Partido Liberal, of Mexico.
In mid-1882, he resumed his work of reorganizing the Cuban revolutionaries, communicating this through letters to Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo. On October 2, 1884, he met with both leaders for the first time and began collaborating on the Gómez-Maceo Insurrectionary Plan, from which he withdrew due to disagreements with the leadership methods employed.
On November 30, 1887, he founded an Executive Committee, of which he was elected president, tasked with directing the revolutionaries' organizational activities. In January 1892, he drafted the Bases and Statutes of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. On April 8, 1892, he was elected Delegate (leader) of that organization, whose constitution was proclaimed two days later, on April 10, 1892. On the 14th, he founded the newspaper Patria, the Party's official organ.
In 1893 and 1894, he traveled through several countries in the Americas and cities in the United States, uniting the main leaders of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) and gathering resources for the new conflict. From mid-1894, he accelerated preparations for the Fernandina Plan, with which he intended to promote a short war, without great losses and destruction for the Cubans. On December 8, 1894, he drafted and signed, along with Colonels Mayía Rodríguez (representing Máximo Gómez) and Enrique Collazo (representing the island's patriots), the plan for the uprising in Cuba. The Fernandina Plan was discovered, and the ships intended for its execution were seized. Despite this, Martí decided to proceed with the plans for the uprising on the island, a decision supported by the main leaders.
On January 29, 1895, together with Mayía and Collazo, he signed the order for the uprising and sent it to Juan Gualberto Gómez for its implementation. He departed immediately from New York for Montecristi, in the Dominican Republic, where Máximo Gómez awaited him. On March 25, 1895, they signed a document known as the "Montecristi Manifesto," a program for the new war. They arrived in Cuba on April 11, 1895, after a difficult landing at Playitas de Cajobabo, in Baracoa.
Three days after arriving, they made contact with the forces of Commander Félix Ruenes. On April 15, 1895, the commanders gathered there under Gómez's leadership agreed to confer upon Martí the rank of Major General of the Liberation Army for his merits and services.
On April 28, 1895, at the Vuelta Corta camp in Guantánamo, he and Gómez signed the circular "War Policy." He sent messages to the leaders instructing them to send a representative to an assembly of delegates to elect a government shortly. On May 5, 1895, he met with Gómez and Maceo in La Mejorana, where they discussed the strategy to follow. On May 14, 1895, he signed the "Circular to the Chiefs and Officers of the Liberation Army," the last of the war's organizational documents, which he drafted jointly with Máximo Gómez.
Continuing their march west through the eastern province, they arrived at Dos Ríos, near Palma Soriano. On May 19, 1895, a Spanish column deployed in the area, and the Cubans went to meet them. Martí was marching with Gómez and Major General Bartolomé Masó. Upon reaching the site of the engagement, Gómez instructed him to halt and remain in the agreed-upon location. However, during the battle, he became separated from the main body of Cuban forces, accompanied only by his aide, Ángel de la Guardia. Martí unknowingly rode toward a group of Spaniards hidden in the undergrowth and was struck by three bullets that caused fatal wounds. When the news of his death arrived, it proved impossible to recover his body, which was taken away by the Spaniards and, after several burials, was finally laid to rest on the 27th in niche number 134 of the south gallery of the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, and many years later in his mausoleum.
From there, his ideas and example inspired the Centennial Generation to finally carry out the Revolution he dreamed of and continue to forever guide all Cubans toward a prosperous, anti-imperialist, and socialist homeland.