Athens, May 19. Today marks the 126th anniversary of the fall in combat of José Julián Martí Pérez (Havana, January 28, 1853 – Dos Ríos, May 19, 1895). National Hero of Cuba. He was a man of high principles, a Latin American and internationalist vocation; impeccable personal conduct, both public and private and with human qualities that sometimes seem insurmountable. A Cuban of universal projection who crossed the borders of the time in which he lived to become the greatest Hispanic American political thinker of the 19th century.
Author of an essential work as a source of knowledge and consultation for all generations of Cubans and the content, style and singular beauty of the poems, letters, newspaper articles, of all the writings and speeches that he made place him as an intellectual of vast culture. But, above all, Martí was a tireless fighter for the independence of Cuba from the yoke of Spanish colonialism. From his earliest age, his human and revolutionary values were forged as well as his unwavering decision to fight for justice, independence and for the equality of human beings.
He was able to understand the errors of the failed first 10-year war of independence (1868-1878) and organize what he called the “Necessary War” or second war of independence, which began in 1895. To consolidate the unity of the forces liberators founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, with everyone and for the good of all, to guide and carry out the strategy of struggle and the republic that would emerge in the new independent state. He also knew how to convince and unite the older generations who fought in the previous war, such as Generals Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, with the new generations of Cubans willing to give their lives for freedom.
On March 25, 1895, he wrote and then signed with General Gómez, The Montecristi Manifesto, a political document of continental importance in which the objectives and purposes of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the principles that animate the new war are reiterated before the world. against Spanish colonialism and for national independence, in which all elements of Cuban society are called to combat. But he not only organized and wrote about the war, he was able to go to the battlefields for Cuban independence. His fall in combat, fighting against Spanish colonialism, on May 19, 1895, represented an irreparable loss for the development of the war, but his doctrine forever became an inexhaustible source of the revolutionary thought of Cubans and Latin Americans. .
Martí died fighting facing the sun, as he said in his “Simple Verses”:
I want when I die
without a country, but without a master,
have on my grave a bouquet
of flowers and a flag.
Don’t put me in the dark
to die a traitor,
I am good, and like good,
I will die facing the sun.
