José Julián Martí

(J. J. Martí y Pérez). Born Jan. 28, 1853, in Havana; died May 19, 1895, in Dos Rios, Oriente Province. Cuban revolutionary and writer, ideologist and organizer of the liberation struggle against Spanish rule. The national hero of Cuba. The son of a soldier.

From the age of 16, Marti devoted himself to revolutionary activity. In 1870 he was arrested and exiled to Spain, where he studied philosophy, literature, and law at the universities of Madrid and Zaragoza. He moved to Mexico in 1875 and then to Guatemala. Returning to Cuba in 1879, Marti helped prepare the uprising against the Spanish yoke, for which he was again exiled to Spain. From 1880 to 1895 he lived in the USA, where he was a correspondent for Latin American newspapers and wrote articles that exposed the aggressive plans and policy of the ruling circles of the USA. Marti started preparing a new uprising in Cuba. In 1892 he brought separate emigre organizations together in the Cuban Revolutionary Party (CRP), which united representatives of various social strata and which played a decisive role in organizing the national liberation uprising that broke out in Cuba on Feb. 24, 1895. The central organ of the CRP was the newspaper Patria, founded by Marti. In April 1895, Marti returned to Cuba to participate directly in the uprising; a month later he died in combat with the Spaniards.

Marti combined practical revolutionary activity with a profound theoretical examination of problems of the revolution and national independence. He warned of the danger that the North American monopolies presented to the independence of the Latin American countries. Marti’s philosophical ideas underwent an evolution from eclecticism and fascination with the philosophy of K. Krause, as expressed in Marti’s Philosophical Ideas, to materialist monism.

Marti’s literary heritage is almost entirely connected with his public activity. His first work, the romantic drama Abdala(1869), is infused with a protest against slavery. In the poetry collections Ismaelillo (1882), Simple Verses (1891), and Free Verses (published in 1913), Marti celebrated simple and sincere human feelings, contrasting them with the world of evil and injustice. Marti’s innovative lyric poetry anticipated the Latin American poetry of the 20th century. His publicistic legacy reflects his rich life and his revolutionary democratic and philosophical and social ideas.