José Martí

Cuban poet, philosopher and nationalist (1853-1895)

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Lived 1853–1895, aged 42Spain

Spain WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
77 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Spain
#229
Writers
Era
1853–1895
Aged 42
Known for
The Desire in Autumn
1972

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

The poet who organized a revolution from exile. Martí spent decades rallying Cuban émigrés across Florida and New York, writing essays and founding newspapers to forge a unified independence movement against Spain — then rode into battle in 1895 and died within weeks, becoming the martyr his cause needed.

Biography

About

Born in Havana in 1853, Martí turned to political activism as a teenager and spent much of his life in forced travel: Spain, Latin America, the United States. He wrote for dozens of newspapers, founded others — including Patria, the engine of his independence campaign — and used his pen to unify the fractured Cuban émigré community in Florida. By the 1890s he had designed the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology, bridging literature and insurgency. On 19 May 1895, he died in military action at the Battle of Dos Ríos, just weeks into the war he'd spent years planning. His verses from Vers…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from José Martí

José Martí

said1887

Love is... born with the pleasure of looking at each other, it is fed with the necessity of seeing each other, it is concluded with the impossibility of separation!

— Amor (1887)

José Martí

said1887

Men are products, expressions, reflections; they live to the extent that they coincide with their epoch, or to the extent that they differ markedly from it.

— Henry Ward Beecher (1887)

José Martí

said1887