José Julián Martí Pérez

c Painting by Mmbando Kennedy.------------------------------------------- José Julián Martí Pérez (January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban Freemasons. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for José Julián Martí Pérez was born on January 28, 1853, in Havana, at 41 Paula St., to a Spanish Valencian father, Mariano Martí Navarro, and Leonor Pérez Cabrera, a native of the Canary Islands. Martí was the elder brother to seven sisters: Leonor, Mariana, Maria de Carmen, Maria de Pilar, Rita Amelia, Antonia and Dolores. He was baptized on February 12 in Santo Ángel Custodio church. When he was four, his family moved from Cuba to Valencia, Spain, but two years later they returned to the island where they enrolled José at a local public school, in the Santa Clara neighborhood where his father worked as a prison guard.[3] In 1865, he enrolled in the Escuela de Instrucción Primaria Superior Municipal de Varones that was headed by Rafael María de Mendive. Mendive was influential in the development of Martí's political philosophies. Also instrumental in his development of a social and political conscience was his best friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez, the son of a wealthy slave-owning family.[4] In April the same year, after hearing the news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Martí and other young students expressed their pain—through group mourning—for the death of a man who had decreed the abolition of slavery in a neighboring country. In 1866, Martí entered the Instituto de Segunda Ensañanza where Mendive financed his studies.[3] Martí signed up at the Escuela Profesional de Pintura y Escultura de La Habana (Professional School for Painting and Sculpture of Havana) in September 1867, known as San Alejandro, to take drawing classes. He hoped to flourish in this area, but did not find commercial success. In 1867, he also entered the school of San Pablo, established and managed by Mendive, where he enrolled for the second and third years of his bachelor's degree, and assisted Mendive with the school's administrative tasks. In April 1868, his poem dedicated to Mendive's wife, A Micaela. En la muerte de Miguel Ángel appeared in Guanabacoa's newspaper El Álbum.[5] When the Ten Years' War broke out in Cuba in 1868, clubs of supporters for the Cuban nationalist cause formed all over Cuba, and José and his friend Fermín joined them. Martí had a precocious desire for the independence and freedom of Cuba. He started writing poems about this vision, while, at the same time, trying to do something to achieve this dream. In 1869, he published his first political writings in the only edition of the newspaper El Diablo Cojuelo, published by Fermín Valdés Domínguez. That same year he published "Abdala", a patriotic drama in verse form in the one-volume La Patria Libre newspaper, which he published himself. "Abdala" is about a fictional country called Nubia which struggles for liberation.[6] His famous sonnet "10 de octubre", later to become one of his most famous poems, was also written during that year, and was published later in his school newspaper.[5] more story? visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD