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 sentence was commuted.
Martí’s Spanish exile marks the initiation of a lengthy period of peregrination: Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, and, finally the United States, a productive period during which he wrote, spoke to Cuban and Hispanic revolutionary and cultural societies, and organized the in vasion of colonial Cuba in 1895.
Spain is where Martí received his formal education: at the universities of Zaragoza and Madrid he earned degrees in philosophy and law. Late in 1874 he left Spain for Mexico, with a brief stay in France. After Europe, Martí found Mexico to be a hospitable environment. He participated widely in the country’s cultural life, wrote for the Revista Universal, helped found the Sociedad Alarcón, debated the merits of spiritualism and materialism in a national forum, wrote a play entitled Amor con amor se paga (Love is Repaid with Love), which premiered in 1875. It was in Mexico where Martí met Carmen Zayas Bazán, who was to become his wife and, subsequently, the symbol of a painful, frustrated domestic life. The rise of the dictator Porfirio Díaz signaled the end of Martí’s Mexican residence and the renewal of his wanderings in search of a place where he could work with personal freedom. He returned briefly to Cuba, responding to the pull of family and a desire to resettle in his homeland.
Guatemala was Martí’s next resting place. His stay there also proved to be brief. He was appointed to the faculty of the Escuela Central de Guatemala where he taught French, English, German and Italian literature as well as the History of Philosophy. For a while life seemed prosperous and serene; he married Carmen Zayas Bazán, contributed to Guatemala’s developing cultural life, and wrote of his gratitude to that country in a slender volume entitled “Guatemala” (1878). A shift in political factions made life there untenable for him. Once again Havana drew him; but while working in the Havana law offices of Miguel Viondi, his revolutionary activities resulted in his second deportation to Spain in 1879.
Instead of staying there, he left almost immediately for France, and then to the United States. While in New York, he met Charles A. Dana who invited him to write for the New York Sun; but New York was not to become Martí’s home until after he attempted life in Venezuela. In 1881 he went to Caracas with the hope of finding refuge and solace in “Our America,” as he called the Hispanic countries of the New World. Things went well in Venezuela, but again, for an extremely short period. Nevertheless, in that time he succeeded in founding an important Modernist magazine, the Revista Venezolana. In its second issue of July 15, 1881, he defended his magazine’s style, and in the course of this defense, developed one of Modernism’s early manifestos:
Some of the “simple” pieces that appeared in our last issue have been tagged and polished exquisite. What follows is not a defense, but a clarification. Private speech is one thing; passionate, public discourse, another. Bitter polemics speak one language; quite another, serene biography… Thus, the same man will speak in a different language when he turns his searching eyes to past epochs, and, when with the anguish and ire of a soldier in battle, he wields a new arm in the angry struggle of the present age… The sky of Egypt ought not be painted with London fogs, nor the youthful verdure of our valleys with the pale green of Arcadia, or the mournful green of Erin. A sentence has its adornments, like a dress, and some dress in wool, some in silk, and some become angry because their dress is wool and are displeased to see another’s is silk. Since when has it become a defect to write in polished form?… It is essential that notice be taken of the following truth about style: writers should paint just as the painter does. There is no reason for one to use different
