Jose Marti was born in Havana, on January 28, 1853, to a sergeant of the Spanish garrison who had retired to become a watchman and his wife from the Canary Islands. Rafael María Mendive (1821-1886), a poet and educational reformer, convinced Marti’s father to let his son study at a secondary school and underwrote the costs himself. Jose later attended the Instituto de Havana (1866-1869) where he worked on the underground periodicals "El Diablo Cojuelo" and "La Patria Libre."
At the age of sixteen, Marti was arrested for subversion and sentenced to six years at hard labor in a chain gang. Within a year he was exiled to Spain, where he studied at the University of Madrid and the University of Saragossa, and there received doctorates in law, philosophy and letters. While in Spain he published "El presidio politico en Cuba"(1871), which described the horrible conditions in Cuban prisons, and "La Republica Espanola ante la Revolucion Cubana" (1873), which challenged the newly-born Spanish Republic to allow Cubans to establish their own democratic government on the island. His three major collections of poetry were "Ismaelillo" (1882), "Versos sencillos" (1891) and "Versos libres" written sometime during the 1880's, but published posthumously in 1913. In one of his most famous poems, "Sueño con claustros de mármol," from Versos sencillos," the statues of fallen heroes leap from their pedestals to upbraid those who assert that their sons have abandoned the cause of freedom and now "eat the bread of opprobrium at the [tyrant's] bloodstained table:"
In 1875 Marti moved to Mexico where he wrote for "La Revista Universal" and premiered his play "Amor con amor se paga" [Love is Repaid with Love]. It was there that he married Carmen Zayas Bazan, the daughter of Cuban emigres. After Porfirio Diaz came to power, Marti settled in Guatemala where he taught literature and philosophy at the University of Guatemala, returning finally to Cuba in 1878, when an Amnesty was decreed at the end of the Ten Years' War (1868-78).His only son, Jose Marti y Zayas Bazan, was born there. In Cuba, he worked as a law clerk while awaiting the validation of his law degree. He also became involved in a conspiracy to renew the war with Spain and was deported for a second time to Spain, in 1879.
He then fled from Spain to France and thence to the United States. In 1880, he settled in New York City where he found work as a journalist for "The Hour" and Dana's "New York Sun" and as foreign correspondent for several Latin American newspapers, including "La Nacion" of Buenos Aires and Mexico's "Partido Liberal." He was also appointed consul in New York of the republics of Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and served as a delegate to the first Pan American conferences. At the same time he taught Spanish at the High School level in the New York City public schools. He also gave classes to the poor and illiterate in New York's Hispanic community. Upmost on his mind and dearest to his heart, however, was the redemption of his country from Spanish rule. Everything that he did ultimately contributed to that cause.
As a writer, Marti is regarded as the father of modernism in Spanish letters. Ruben Dario himself called Marti "Master" and Marti called him "son." His style is still considered a model of Spanish prose. His collected writings in 73 volumes appeared in 1936-53. The main body of his writing was journalistic in nature, written mainly for newspapers and magazines. He always reaffirmed his anti-colonialist and anti-racist beliefs in his essays. ‘Nuestra America’ (1891) is an essay in which Marti formulated his own Pan-Latin-American doctrine. He emphasized the need to come to terms with the continent's multiracial identity and the importance of teaching thoroughly the history of America, from the Incas to modern times. In short: to love what is ours and not just what is not ours.
Marti remained in the U.S. for the last 15 years of his life except for short trips to raise funds for the next uprising in Cuba. In 1892, he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its political organ "Patria" to lay the groundwork for the liberation of his homeland. In 1895, Marti signed with General Maximo Gomez the Proclamation of War and landed on the island in the first wave of the invasion. He was proclaimed a Major General by the other commanders and died in a skirmish at Dos Rios, on May 19, 1895, as he had prophesied:
"Don't in darkness let me lie
With traitors to come undone:
I am good, and as the good die,
I will die face to the sun!"
Tina
OP Research Team
Bibliography Information:
www.kirjasto.sci.fi/josemart.htm
