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Martí’s Long Residence in the United States

The day before he died, José Martí wrote a letter warning against the designs of the United States on Cuba and describing the United States as a monster. Left-wing commentators focus on this description, arguing that Martí became increasingly anti-American over the years. Other commentators dispute this claim, maintaining that during his long stay in the United States Martí continually expressed mixed views on the country.

While he lived in the United States, Martí expressed a wide range of attitudes to it, from wonder at the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge to shock at the anarchist bombings at Haymarket Square in 1886 and from a celebration of its many poets to disapproval of its treatment of African Americans, Indians, and Chinese immigrants. Martí made himself a commentator on American life, mostly for his Latin American compatriots, and it may be that the complexity of his responses to what he saw in the United States reflects not only the complexities of his own views but also the complexities of the country he was observing.

Great Lives from History: Latinos

José Martí

by Sheldon Goldfarb

Cuban-born activist, poet, and journalist

Best known as Cuba’s national hero and as the author of verses used in the song “Guantanamera,” Martí spent most of his adult life in the United States and wrote extensively about life there.

Areas of achievement: Activism; journalism; literature

Early Life

José Julián Martí y Pérez, better known as José Martí (hoh-ZAY mahr-TEE), was born in Cuba when it was still a Spanish colony. He was the oldest child and only son of Mariano Martí, a sergeant in the Spanish army, and Leonor Pérez. The elder Martí was a strong proponent of Spanish rule, but at high school the young José came under the influence of Rafael María de Mendive, the school’s director and a strong supporter of Cuban independence.

José Martí.

324_Marti_Jose.jpg

(Library of Congress)

At the age of fifteen Martí published a poem in a local newspaper, and the next year, after the outbreak of an uprising against Spanish rule, he published or worked for two short-lived journals calling for Cuban independence, El diablo cojuelo (The Limping Devil) and La patria libre (The Free Homeland). In the latter, he published a verse drama, Abdala, about a young man leading a revolt in the ancient land of Nubia against the wishes of his family. That same year, 1869, both he and his mentor, Mendive, were arrested by the Spanish authorities. In 1870, at the age of seventeen, Martí was sentenced to a term of hard labor at a stone quarry in San Lázaro, Cuba, where he spent six months, after which he was exiled to Spain.

Martí spent four years in Spain, during which time he completed degrees in philosophy and law at the Central University of Madrid and the University of Zaragoza. He also published two political works on the situation in Cuba, El presidio político en Cuba (The Political Prison in Cuba), in which he described abuses and mistreatment, and La república Española ante la revolucíon Cubana (The Spanish Republic and the Cuban Revolution), in which he called on the new Spanish Republic to extend democratic rule to Cuba.

His family having moved to Mexico, Martí joined them there in 1875, but after the coup by Porfirio Díaz, he found it impossible to stay and moved to Guatemala. He worked as a teacher in both countries and also began writing for the newspapers. He made a brief return to Cuba in 1877 under an assumed name, and then after an amnesty was issued he moved there more permanently in 1878. However, his political activities got him arrested and exiled again in 1879. He went first to Spain, but then made his way to New York City, arriving in January, 1880.

Life’s Work

Martí spent most of the rest of his life in New York, working as a journalist, writing poetry, and promoting the cause of Cuban independence. He lived briefly in Venezuela in 1881, but he ran into difficulties with the Venezuelan government and returned to live in New York.

In New York he found work as a translator and teacher of Spanish, but he devoted most of his time to journalism, writing in English for the New York paper The Hour and also contributing reports to a large number of newspapers in Latin America, including La nación in Argentina. He became the interpreter of the United States to Latin America, writing on a wide range of topics from Coney Island and the Brooklyn Bridge to American elections, natural disasters, the racial situation, immigration, and labor issues. He also wrote many profiles of leading American politicians and writers, such as Ulysses S. Grant and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Martí also became a diplomatic representative for several Latin American countries, including Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, and he represented Latin American interests at two international conferences, the Pan-American Conference of 1889 and the International Monetary Conference of 1891, at both of which he warned Latin Americans against letting themselves fall under the sway of the United States.

Falling ill after the 1889 conference, he went to the Catskill Mountains to recuperate, and there he wrote a collection of poems published in 1891 as Versos sencillos (Simple Verses). He had earlier published a collection of poems, Ismaelillo (1882), about his son, and after his death another collection of his poetry was published as Versos libres (Free Verses). In 1891, however, he stopped writing poetry and journalism, gave up his diplomatic posts, and turned his full attention to the struggle for Cuban independence.

In the 1880’s Martí had distanced himself from the two generals, Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, most involved in raising forces to invade Cuba to free it from Spain, fearing they would institute military rule on the island. He believed that an independent Cuba would have to be a democratic republic under civilian rule. He later reconciled with the generals and began working with the various proindependence groups in Cuban exile communities, eventually succeeding in unifying them in 1892 into the Cuban Revolutionary Party, of which he became the leader.

Over the next three years, he made visits to the Cuban communities in Florida, notably in Tampa and Key West, and began publishing Patria, the organ of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. He also met with Gómez and Maceo in various locations in the Caribbean, and early in 1895 he and Gómez issued the Montecristi Manifesto in the Dominican Republic. The uprising against Spanish rule began in February that year, and Martí landed in Cuba to join it in April. He was shot and killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos on May 19 after ignoring orders from General Gómez to stay away from the front lines.

Significance

After his death, Martí became a Cuban national hero, claimed by all sides in Cuba’s various political conflicts. In the first half of the twentieth century, he was known as the Apostle and the Martyr of Cuban Independence, seen as almost saintly and commemorated with various statues. Hailed by Fidel Castro as the inspiration for Castro’s 1959 revolution, Martí continued to be honored in Castro’s Cuba but as an anti-imperialist, anti-American revolutionary. At the same time, the anti-Castro Cuban community in the United States continued to revere Martí, using his name for their radio station and calling him a defender of liberal democracy and human rights.

In the 1990’s, some American academics began to see him as a promoter of transnationalism and Latin Americanism in opposition to what they termed American imperialism. Other scholars pointed to Martí’s complexity and elusiveness, noting that in his large body of works could be found praise for the ingenuity, industriousness, and democratic traditions of the United States, as well as criticism of its emphasis on the accumulation of wealth, its political corruption, and its expansionism. Most agreed, however, that he had perceptive things to say about life in nineteenth-century America.

Martí perhaps became best known to an English-speaking audience through his association with the popular song, “Guantanamera,” which is based in part on poetry from his Versos sencillos.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Goldfarb, Sheldon. "José Martí." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240037401001.

APA 7th

Goldfarb, S. (2012). José Martí. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Goldfarb, Sheldon. "José Martí." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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