With tears and steel, his tender pen was carved. With it he filled with truths newspapers and books that showed the world his position and fight for the full equality of man.
He sacrificed the warmth of the family, the first steps of his only son, the sincere friendship of Fermín and Mendive, love, all his life.
He preferred the remoteness and loneliness, the continuous journey in search of other friends who would support him from outside, in the preparation of a war to liberate his homeland and the whole America, because in his heart every man had the same love shared.
Many times he saw death on one side of the table, on the other the loneliness and with a people behind him; but with the courage and optimism ahead to continue writing to his loved ones and to fly in the sincerity of his words messages full of affection to all, because for him the freedom of men was the essence of life.
Our Martí, the little one who had the soul of a giant
In the short but prolific work of the Apostle of Cuban Independence there are no borders, nor time to define when he made his first political articles. Writing in favor of justice and freedom was a perennial hymn in the pen of the Master since he had the use of reason.
At just 9 years old, little Pepe, as he was affectionately called, saw to beat a black man on the “Hanábana” farm, in which his father was an agent of authority. Such a scene made him forget all the beauty he had learned from the animals of the place.
That day in his knowledge as a child an awareness of justice was awakened so advanced that he wrote: “Who has seen a black man whipped, is not considered his debtor forever? I saw him when I was a child, and I still have the shame on my cheeks … I saw him and I swore to myself since then his defense “.
Years later he suffered imprisonment for his ideas and from that sad and tortuous time arose the crude denunciation and accusation of the inhuman behavior of Spain on the island, collected in the pages of “The political prison in Cuba” published in Spain where he was banished.
Martí´s Proses…
Many were the prose and poems of José Martí impregnated more than politics, extreme denunciation, justice and equality.
His brilliant phrase “Homeland is Humanity” has never been erased from the conscience of men which in the world defend justice, because in just three phrases it is summarized: quality of life of the population, respect for human rights, happiness and desires to build a fairer humanity.
According to the intellectual and religious Frei Beto, Homeland is the ability of a nation to integrate with others, in which humanity constitutes a single family, without discrimination and ethnic, social or religious prejudices, “Homeland is a humanity of solidarity, fair, free and peaceful.
Martí made it clear that a human being is a cultural and spiritual being, and this depends on the basic formation of the person, the cultivation of values, idealism, convictions and altruistic practices; in this sense, any just action based on noble principles of aggrandizement and development of the land in which we were born and for which we fight will always be human and will make us better people.
Photo: taken from www.radioreloj.cu
Translated into English by José Carlos García Cruz
