Centenary of a Liberator

With flags, band music and thunderous oratory, Cuba last week celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jose Marti, the island's liberator. A ballet, headed by Cuba-born Alicia Alonso, performed nightly in an outdoor theater; 7,000 torch-bearing paraders marched at midnight; schoolchildren dropped a thousand white flowers at the base of the Marti monument. For a week, Cubans laid aside strong talk about their strong man, General Fulgencio Batista, and gave themselves over to honoring one of Latin America's greatest, though least known, historical figures.

On a Chain Gang. The man Cubans revere as their apostle of independence was no fire-eating general, ablaze with gold braid. He was a poet--a down-at-the-heels poet with an absurd Mark Twain mustache and a burning conviction that Cubans had a right to freedom. In a short, feverish life, he laid the foundation of the movement that swept the Spanish King's men out of Cuba.

Jose Marti was born in Havana, the son of one of Spain's own soldiers, on Jan. 28, 1853. At 15 he was jailed for his sympathies with the rebels in the unsuccessful Ten Years War (1868-78) against Spain. He served 18 months, six of them on a chain gang in a quarry, where he was burned by quicklime and flogged by guards. Then he was exiled to Spain. Except for three brief return trips, he spent the rest of his life outside Cuba--in Spain, France, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela and the U.S., "the land where everyone is his own master."

For 14 years, beginning in 1881, he lived in New York, and made his living as a writer. He became U.S. correspondent for South American newspapers (notably Buenos Aires' La Nation), wrote essays on the Brooklyn Bridge and woman's suffrage, did art criticism in English for the New York Sun, wrote books for children, and did translations for Appleton & Co. Tirelessly, he wrote letters to unite Cuban rebels, organized revolutionary clubs, lectured (sometimes in Tammany Hall) to other Cuban exiles.

On a White Horse. Marti became the established political leader of all Cuban exiles. In the cigar factories of Tampa and Key West, he persuaded Cuban workers to join his Revolutionary Party and give a day's wages every week to the cause. Tactfully, he brought the proud generals of the Ten Years War under his command; incongruously, he haggled with munitions salesmen in New York hotel lobbies. More than anyone else, he touched off the revolt in 1895.

On a black night, he rowed ashore with his military chieftains from a German steamer to a secluded beach in eastern Cuba. A few weeks later, with troops landed elsewhere, the revolutionaries engaged the Spanish regulars near Camagueey. Dressed as usual in formal black, waving an unaccustomed pistol, Marti charged on a white horse. One of the first of the Spanish bullets smashed through his breast and killed him. He was 42. His death helped turn the uncertain, barefoot rebels into a band of machete-swinging warriors; he became a hero whose fiery slogans were remembered. Three years later, thanks to powerful intervention by the U.S., Marti's goal of independence was in sight.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.