Jose Marti, 130 years after his fall in combat

Only one of his virtues will be enough to be remembered and loved, but José Martí, who fell in combat on May 19, 1895, 130 years ago, in Dos Ríos, had so many that he explains today why he remains the beacon of light illuminating the thought and awareness of Cubans and at the same time their National Hero.

A poet and journalist since his teens, he was also a revolutionary and politician, in favor of the independence of his homeland from an early age.

He arrived in Dos Ríos, since his death a sacred site for his nationals, after his return to the Homeland since April 11, to get fully involved in the fighting of the Necessary War organized by him after 15 years of exile in the United States.

To those who out of appreciation advised him not to go to direct war, because he was a man of letters and a politician and not a soldier, he clarified that he was going to do his duty entirely, since he had been the evocator of that libertarian campaign.

Before enemy bullets shot him off the horse in his first and last combat, he was promoted to the rank of Major General of the Liberation Army, on the La Mejorana estate, with the consent of Generalissimo Maximo Gómez and the Bronze Titan, Antonio Maceo, lieutenant general.

The start of the new epic of the Cubans occurred on February 24, 1895, but the chiefs were only able to arrive in Cuba days later, in early April.

In the camps there was even talk of José Martí as president of the future free Cuba, although he preferred to be identified as a delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, essential in the mobilization that made the campaign a reality, and as long as he was clear about which nation was to be founded once sovereignty was achieved.

On the eve of his physical departure in an unfinished letter to his endearing Mexican friend Manuel Mercado, he confessed to having worked secretly and conscientiously to prevent with Cuba's freedom the expansion of the United States through America. And so I would continue to do.

That irrefutable statement remains illuminating clairvoyance for your fellow countrymen today and forever.

The poet, essayist, writer and journalist José Martí had great recognition for his intellectual work, which included work as a professor and diplomat in several countries of America. All that work, which he undoubtedly loved, he left to give himself entirely to the cause of independence when he believed the time came.

Not counting the pain suffered before the misunderstandings of his mother, Leonor Pérez, and his father, Don Mariano Martí, as well as his wife, Carmen Zayas Bazán.

Despite this, jewels of his creation remain such as the Simple Verses, Free Verses, the poetry collection Ismaelillo, dedicated to his son José Francisco, and the Golden Age. He is considered the father of the modernist poetic movement, a valuation still debatable, but still well founded.

The essay Nuestra América and its valuable testimonies in journalism such as the American Chronicles and the Constant Section of the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional also endure.

His extensive stationery, which includes speeches, documents and letters to family and friends, compiled in The Complete Works, is a monument to wise teachings in multiple aspects, which also show him with great philosophical gifts without having that trade.

Organizing the necessary war was the number one task of his life, of his own free will in recent years, and he did hard and titanic work amid his modest conditions bordering on poverty in that work in other people's land, where he was also watched and persecuted.

He took the baton left years ago by the founding fathers and to fulfill the enormous task he was faithful to the sacrifice and wear of his health, under the principles of his honesty, always strengthened and even happy and full of happiness on the eve of his final farewell. That is why he was also called Master and Apostle of Independence.

Today his compatriots expand and make more beautiful the monument that needs the place of his death, facing the sun, in Dos Ríos, a plain near the municipality of Jiguaní, in the now Granma province.

And they do more, they remember it from school activities and readings, which pretend to know it as multiplely and deeply as its existence was. Enjoying his poems, learning from his political and human lights are among his goals.

They commit themselves daily to him trying to follow his thinking to maintain a sovereign Homeland, with everyone and for the good of all.

Agencia Cubana de Noticias, May 18th, 2025.