José Julian Martí

José Julian Martí (1853-1895), Cuban writer and patriot, whose death in battle made him the martyred symbol of Cuban aspirations to independence.

Martí was born on January 28, 1853, in Havana, where he received his primary education. At the age of 16 he joined a revolutionary uprising for which he was imprisoned and then banished to Spain. There he published the first of many pamphlets advocating Cuban independence from Spain and at the same time finished his education at the University of Saragossa, gaining a degree in law in 1874. He subsequently went to France, Mexico, and Guatemala, where he taught for a while at the University of Guatemala. He returned to Cuba in 1878 but was banished again in 1879 for his continued revolutionary activities. While living in the United States from 1881 to 1895, Martí was active in the Partido Revolucionario Cuban (Cuban Revolutionary Party, or PRC) and founded its journal, Patria (1892). In 1892 Martí was elected as a delegate of the PRC, and in 1894 led a group of armed revolutionaries in an invasion of Cuba, only to be intercepted in Florida and turned back. The following year, however, he reached Cuba, along with the independence hero General Máximo Gómez y Báez. Martí was killed a month later (May 19, 1895) during a skirmish with Spanish troops at Dos Ríos.

As a writer Martí was a precursor of modernism in Spanish literature; he was noted for his simple, fluent style and his personal, vivid imagery. His writings include numerous poems, essays, and a novel. His Obras completas (Complete Works), consisting of 73 volumes, were published between 1936 and 1953.