On the 124th Anniversary of the fall in combat of the National Hero of Cuba, José Martí, the young Cuban artist, Daniela Pereira, shows work dedicated to the Apostle in the Mission of the Island in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Daniela Pereira, a graduate of the State Academy of Plastic Arts of Azerbaijan, made the engraving for her personal graduation collection in this high center of studies.
The picture that today is exposed in Baku, reflects the moment of the fall in combat of the Cuban patriot on April 19, 124 years ago today.
José Martí Pérez (1853-1895), distinguished revolutionary patriot from a very young age, began to express his social, patriotic and independence concerns, which led to him being sentenced to six years of prison and forced labor at 16 years of age.
On January 15, 1875, he was banished to Spain; Upon his arrival in Madrid, he published his essay "El presidio político en Cuba", which is a grounded and virile denunciation of the atrocities of the colonial regime.
During the forced exile he travels to France, Mexico and Guatemala. In these last two countries, as in Spain, he develops an outstanding work as an intellectual. He returned to Cuba taking advantage of the general amnesty decreed at the end of the Ten Year War. He participated with other patriots in the conspiracy that culminated with the so-called "Little War".
At the end of 1879 he was deported again to Spain and there he continued his campaign of denunciations against the atrocities of the colonial regime; from this place he traveled to New York where he dedicated himself to promoting the independence ideal among Cuban emigres. After a brief stay in Venezuela in 1881, he returned to the United States where he resided uninterruptedly until 1892. During that long period he devoted himself totally to the task of organizing the war in Cuba and founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which would bring together all the emigrated patriots and those who remained on the island, and of which he is elected as the highest leader by the unanimous vote of the delegates.
He gave himself to the titanic task of unifying all the patriotic forces for the sake of independence and to organize what he called "The Necessary War". Despite enormous obstacles, the fight restarts on February 24, 1895.
In the Montecristi Manifesto, a document that he signed together with Máximo Gómez on March 25, 1895, and which would be the definitive program of the revolutionary movement, clearly states "that the war is not against the Spanish but against the system and the government colonial ", condemns monoculture, racism, contempt for the indigenous masses, the concentration of culture in cities and other evils existing in the American republics and expresses the confidence that the Cuban people would know how to build a country free of all those evils
The extraordinary clarity and certainty of Marti's thought allowed Fidel Castro to proclaim him, more than half a century later, the intellectual author of the new stage of the struggle begun on July 26, 1953 for definitive independence.
After signing the Montecristi Manifesto, Martí left for Cuba to demonstrate that he was not only the man of ideas, but the leader capable of giving his life for his principles. On April 11, 1895, he disembarked with Máximo Gómez, from a small boat, in a remote spot in eastern Cuba called Playitas de Cajobabo. After a long journey they manage to establish contact with the revolutionary forces. Considering his extraordinary contributions to the pro-independence cause and his undisputed leadership, he is promoted to Major General, highest level of the Liberation Army.
Martí fell in combat, on May 19, 1895. During the morning of that day a bloody action took place between the forces led by General Máximo Gómez with a Spanish column of more than 800 troops, and although he ordered the Master not to participate in the confrontation, this does not obey and willing to go into action very soon falls down shot by the bullets.