José Martí Inspired Cuba’s Fight for True Independence
José Martí spent much of his short life outside Cuba, preparing a struggle to liberate his country from Spanish colonialism. The ideas and example of Martí would inspire a second struggle against US neocolonial domination after his death.
A “national hero” of Cuba, Jose Martí sought to unite the country’s pro-independence factions through the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which he founded in 1892. (Bettmann / Getty Images)
Reviewing a reader is never easy, since such volumes are often uneven compilations of a range of authors and topics around a broad central theme. However, here the “theme” is one person, José Martí, and the collection largely focuses on his writings on the Americas, giving it greater coherence than many.
However, the editors have a different challenge to grapple with. As Cuba’s best-known historical figure until the rise of Fidel Castro, and certainly the one who was most widely respected (and even sanctified), Martí’s status as Cuba’s “national hero” was already well-established before 1959.
He wrote prolifically in several fields, his Complete Works filling twenty-six volumes. One of the Spanish-speaking world’s leading modernista poets, he was also an eloquent journalist and chronicler, a prodigious letter-writer, and even a diplomat for three Latin American countries.
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