A new January 28th arrives to mark Cuban National Hero José Martí’s 169th birth anniversary, as his poems and words and plenty of dedicated songs fly in our schools, where he is so cherished, and elsewhere nationwide as part of an indescribable celebration.
A humble house on Paula Street, today Leonor Perez—named after his mother—saw José Julián Martí Pérez grow up. He was the eldest son of a family, including his sisters, formed by poor but righteous and honest parents of Spanish origin beyond reproach.
As a child, Martí—nicknamed Pepe by family and friends—studied in schools that his family’s scant resources could afford, but as it is widely known, the education he received in the school of the patriot and revolutionary intellectual José María de Mendive proved to be crucial.
Many years later, when from exile in New York and after a journey through several Latin American countries, he was able to realize his project of organizing the last war of independence against colonialism, as the seed planted by his educators had turned him into a man of extraordinary intelligence and moral values, one of the secrets of his light.
It is not by chance that José Martí’s glow reaches our days, and especially the date of his birthday, with the great multiplying force of the best virtues of the Cuban people, who have taken him as an example and as a hero, along with the figure of his most faithful disciple: Fidel Castro Ruz.
These are not mere words, as every Cuban knows. It is a good thing that we mitigate our immense sorrow felt for his fall on May 19, 1895, in Dos Ríos, by not letting him die—as the Centennial Generation did—and looking again to his wisdom and thought with the eagerness to learn and grow that today prevails in the Homeland and among his eternal students.
When he fell, facing the sun, in the early days of the definitive war that he organized, he held high positions in the nascent Liberation Army and was called President by his comrades, although he preferred to be called Delegate, alluding to his duties as founder, in April 1892, of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, the first step in the preparation of the last charge.
In addition to his values as a revolutionary and political genius, his birthday revives the poet, storyteller, journalist and profound thinker whose passion and fighting spirit pervaded the continent.
Forced to deportation and exile in 1871), he made the most of this circumstance to work and forge of his life for the good of his people. As such he worked as a correspondent for major dailies in the thriving city of New York and other media outlets from Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and Mexico.
Venezuelan intellectual Susana Rotker, winner of the 1991 Casa de las Americas Essay Award for her work Fundación de una escritura, las crónicas de José Martí, points out that at a time when the languages of literature and journalism were clearly different and estranged from each other, Martí’s prose changed the situation through the chronicles he wrote from 1880 to 1892.
Everybody knows that Marti’s poetics inspired the famous Modernist movement, something that Rubén Darío himself proclaimed, although José Martí, in fact, was not a poet who could be included among the followers of that school.
In this connection, we should bear in mind that the author of the collection of poems Ismaelillo (dedicated to his son), Versos Sencillos, the sharp and transcendent essay Nuestra América in 1891, and the children’s magazine La Edad de Oro, developed in his time a renowned and recognized literary work, although this did not lead bring him any material wealth whatsoever.
Nowadays, his life and example are as inspirational as his intellectual and political creation, since he always worked for the Revolution with humility, modesty, honesty and poverty, showing unlimited selflessness and self-sacrifice, which earned him the reference as Apostle.
Another one of his shining legacies, very valid these days, was the purpose, confessed in his last letter to his friend Manuel Mercado, of working hard so that the independence of Cuba would prevent the U.S. from expanding throughout the lands of our America.
He was not only libertarian and anti-colonialist, he carried in his mind the germ of what would later be known as anti-imperialism, since the 15 years he lived in the United States allowed him to get to know that society and make accurate premonitions about the future of Hispanic America with respect to the emerging world power.
That is why he insisted on valuing the tireless and unrelenting struggle and the power of the Cuban people and their necessary unity for the cause. That is how he thought that any obstacle could be brought down on the way towards a Revolution born of reflection rather than unjustified anger and violence.
He dreamed of a free Republic, which should be “with all and for the good of all”, an endeavor that Cubans today have taken up very seriously, since Martí, far from ever letting them down, encourages them and makes them grow.
