Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) once remarked that poets are the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” for their ability to stir passions, instill hope, and guide society’s moral compass.
José Martí (1853–1895), a Cuban poet, journalist, and political agitator, was the man who proved the truth of Shelley’s maxim. Considered the founding father of independent Cuba, the diminutive Martí served his country not with military feats, but with poetry and essays that helped sway his countrymen toward revolution. Indeed, Martí’s influence in Cuba is so great that even today, both Fidel Castro (1926–) and his enemies claim the Havana-born poet as inspiration. Castro’s Communist youth group and the US government’s anti-Castro radio station based in Florida are both named after Martí.
By the late nineteenth century, the island of Cuba was virtually all that remained of Spain’s once-vast American empire. The Spanish colonial governors were noted for their cruelty and incompetence; two revolts, one in 1868 and another in 1895, had led to harsh crackdowns on the island.
Martí supported the 1868 revolt as a high school art student. As a result, he was convicted of treason while still a teenager and sent to Spain in the hope that he would lose interest in Cuban politics.
Instead, Martí’s exile only fostered his yearning for a free Cuba. He would spend most of the rest of his life in exile, including fifteen years in New York City, writing countless poems and political tracts in favor of Cuban independence. He toured the world drumming up international support for the Cuban cause and drawing attention to Spanish atrocities.
In 1894, after years of building alliances with other Cuban dissidents, Martí traveled to Mexico to plan another revolt. He landed on the island in 1895 and declared an uprising, but was killed by Spanish soldiers in one of the first battles of the war. He was forty-two at the time of his death.
Three years later, after the United States entered the war on the side of the rebels, Spain surrendered the island. Following a brief American occupation, the island officially became independent in 1902.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- In addition to his political writing, while living in New York City, Martí founded a Spanish-language children’s magazine called La Edad de Oro—“The Golden Age.”
- Martí had no military experience before returning to Cuba in 1895, and he was killed within a few weeks of entering combat. He may have been a particularly easy target because he was riding a white horse and had gotten separated from the rest of the Cuban force.
- A bronze equestrian statue of Martí was erected in New York City’s Central Park in 1965, next to statues of two other Latin American heroes: Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), the liberator of six South American countries, and José de San Martin (1778–1850), the national hero of Argentina.
