José Martí Reader. Jose Marti
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The first issue of La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), a magazine for children of the Americas, appears. In the following months, he put out three more issues.
September 28: He writes his first feature article about the Pan-American Congress, which is to begin in Washington on October 2. He warns of the expansionist designs of the United States in Latin America — a theme he develops in his address to the Latin American literary society (“Mother America”) in December.
1890
January: Along with Rafael Serra, Martí founds La Liga (The League) in New York for the education and advancement of black Cuban workers in that city.
July 24: Martí is named Consul of the Argentine Republic in New York. A week later, he also becomes Paraguay’s Consul.
1891
January 1: Martí publishes his important essay “Nuestra América” (“Our America”) in La Revista Ilustrada of New York.
February—April: As Uruguay’s delegate, Martí attends the sessions of the American International Monetary Commission and actively defends the rights of Latin America.
October 11: He resigns as the Consul of the Republics of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
October: His Versos sencillos (Simple Verses) is published.
November 26 and 27: Martí travels to Florida and gives important speeches at meetings of Cuban exiles. He joins the Patriotic Cuban League.
November 28: In the farewell that the exiles in Tampa give him, the resolutions drafted by Martí, which seek to unify the Cuban revolutionary movement, are approved.
1892
January 5: The Cuban Revolutionary Party is formed with aims and statutes which Martí had written and discussed with the leaders of the main organizations in Key West.
March 14: The first issue of Patria, which Martí financed and edited, appears. As the voice of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, its goal is to promote the cause of Cuban independence.
April 8: Martí is elected a delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. He is reelected in each of the next three years.
April 10: The Cuban Revolutionary Party is proclaimed in Key West, Tampa and New York.
July 3: Martí begins the first of many trips to places where the Cuban émigrés live, doing intensive organizational work.
September 11: In La Reforma, Santo Domingo, Martí meets with General Máximo Gómez, who will be commander-in-chief of the war for independence.
1893
May: Martí clarifies the Cuban Revolutionary Party’s position on the armed uprising in Cuba, which the Party had not ordered.
July: He meets General Antonio Maceo in Costa Rica after having conferred with Gómez in Montecristi, Santo Domingo, some days earlier.
1894
April 8: Martí meets with Gómez in New York.
June: He visits Costa Rica and exchanges views with Generals Antonio and José Maceo concerning war preparations.
July—August: He visits Mexico seeking political and financial support.
December 8: Martí writes and co-signs — with Commander Enrique Collazo, representative of the conspirators on the island, and Colonel José María Rodríguez, on behalf of General Gómez — the Fernandina Plan for an uprising, which he sends to Cuba.
1895
January: A traitor alerts US authorities, who seize two ships that were to have taken the expeditionaries and their supplies and equipment to Cuba, thus frustrating the Fernandina Plan.
January 29: From New York Martí sends the order for the uprising to the island.
February 7: He arrives in Montecristi, Santo Domingo, where he meets with General Gómez.
February 24: Cuba’s War of Independence begins.
March 25: Martí and Gómez sign the Manifesto of Montecristi.
April 9: Martí and a small group of revolutionaries set out by boat for Cuba.
April 11: After many vicissitudes, Martí manages to land at Playita, in the eastern part of the island, together with Generals Máximo Gómez and Francisco Borrero, Colonel Angel Guerra, César Salas and Marcos del Rosario.
April 15: General Gómez informs Martí that the Chiefs of Staff have resolved to recognize him as Cuban Revolutionary Party Delegate and to give him the rank of Major-General in the Liberation Army.
May 2: Martí writes a manifesto in the form of a letter to the editor of the New York Herald, which he and Gómez sign.
May 18: He begins to write his last letter (to Manuel Mercado), which he never completes.
May 19: Martí is fatally wounded in his first armed combat against enemy troops at Dos Ríos, Oriente Province.
Introduction
José Martí (1853–95) was a revolutionary writer in every sense of the word. Born of Spanish parents in colonial Cuba, he witnessed the oppressive measures imposed on the island by the Spanish colonial administration. Early in his life he made the decision to fight for the liberation of his country and similarly oppressed Antillean peoples. But Martí was not merely a political revolutionary: he was a revolutionary in literature who gave expression to the emerging ideas and emotions of a modernizing world in a language and style that perplexed and fascinated many of his contemporaries. Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859–95), for example, wrote of the Cuban that at times he could not follow his ideas, “because his ideas have sturdy wings, strong lungs, and rise inordinately… [in his] magical style we lose ourselves from time to time, like Reynaldo in the garden of Armida…”
Martí’s conscious resolve to devote himself to revolutionary political and literary ideals became clear shortly after the first Cuban war against Spain (1868). During this period he participated in the publication of clandestine newspapers and circulars, including El Diablo Cojuelo (The Crippled Devil), and later, La Patria Libre (Free Homeland). In the latter, in 1869, he published a dramatic poem, “Abdala,” in which the main character sacrifices his life to defend his country against its oppressors. For a while the colonial regime took no action against Martí; but in 1869, when he and a friend, Fermín Valdés Domínguez, signed a letter questioning the political behavior of one of their classmates, Martí was accused of treason against the Spanish colonial regime. He was tried and condemned to six years’ hard labor in the quarries of San Lázaro in Havana.
The San Lázaro experience is recorded in a political essay “Political Prison in Cuba,” published in 1871, that is both moving and revealing: moving, because it records an adolescent’s reaction to the harsh, sometimes nightmarish conditions of a forced labor camp; revealing, because it foreshadows the expressive force of a mature writer. “Political Prison in Cuba” is directed to the Spanish authorities; it is a plea for humanity and reform in the administration of the island. It is also a milestone in the evolution of the prose in a period of metamorphic change called Modernismo in Latin American literature and culture. “Political Prison in Cuba” was followed by a companion piece entitled “The Spanish Republic and the Cuban Revolution,” written in Spain in 1873, where the young Martí was exiled after his