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.

[8] In April the same year, after hearing the news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 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 the United States.

At this point, Martí began collaborating with the newspaper El Socialista as leader of the Gran Círculo Obrero (Great Labor Circle) organization of liberals and reformists who supported Lerdo de Tejada.

On December 7, Martí published his article Alea Jacta Est in the newspaper El Federalista, bitterly criticizing the Porfiristas' armed assault upon the constitutional government in place.

[27] The article "El ajusticiamiento de Guiteau," an account of President Garfield's murderer's trial, was published in La Opinion Liberal in 1881, and later selected for inclusion in The Library of America's anthology of American True Crime writing.

His repertory of original work included plays, a novel, poetry, a children's magazine, La Edad de Oro, and a newspaper, Patria, which became the official organ of the Cuban Revolutionary party".

Ultimately, Martí refused to cooperate with Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo Grajales, two Cuban military leaders from the Ten Years' War, when they wanted to invade immediately in 1884.

After a short time, during which Carmen Zayas Bazán realized that Martí's dedication to Cuban independence surpassed that of supporting his family, she returned to Havana with her son on August 27.

Juan Gualberto Gómez was assigned to orchestrate war preparations for La Habana Province, and was able to work right under the noses of the relatively unconcerned Spanish authorities.

[36] The expedition, composed of Martí, Gómez, Ángel Guerra, Francisco Borreo, Cesar Salas and Marcos del Rosario, left Montecristi for Cuba on April 1, 1895.

The death of Martí was a blow to the "aspirations of the Cuban rebels, inside and outside of the island, but the fighting continued with alternating successes and failures until the entry of the United States into the war in 1898".

[40][41][42][43] Radical liberalism in Latin America during this time period often took on a nationalist and anti-imperialist cast, as shown by the examples of Francisco Bilbao in Chile, Benito Juárez in Mexico, José Santos Zelaya in Nicaragua, and Ramón Emeterio Betances in Puerto Rico, whom Martí deeply admired and considered one of his teachers.

[44][45] An increasingly radicalized liberalism emphasizing democratic participation, economic equality, national sovereignty, and supplemented by his exposure to doctrines such as Georgism, remained the dominant basis of Martí's outlook.

[52] Together with other Cubans resident in New York, Martí started laying the grounds for the Revolutionary Party, stressing the need for a democratic organization as the basic structure before any military leaders were to join.

[58] At the same time, he recognized the advantages of the civilizations of Western Europe and the United States, which were open to the reforms that Latin American countries needed in order to detach themselves from the colonial heritage of Spain.

On various occasions Martí conveyed his deep admiration for the immigrant-based society, "whose principal aspiration he interpreted as being to construct a truly modern country, based upon hard work and progressive ideas."

Different races were being discriminated against; political life "was both cynically regarded by the public at large and widely abused by 'professional politicians'; industrial magnates and powerful labor groups faced each other menacingly".

Martí believed that "el hombre del sur", the man of the South, should choose an appropriate development strategy matching his character, the peculiarity of his culture and history, and the nature that determined his being.

The rest (an enormous amount) was left dispersed in numerous newspapers and magazines, in letters, in diaries and personal notes, in other unedited texts, in frequently improvised speeches, and some lost forever.

Later still, in 1980, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Mejía Sánchez produced a set of about thirty of Martí's articles written for the Mexican newspaper El Partido Liberal that weren't included in any of his so-called Obras Completas editions.

The various sections of this part are about general matters and international conferences; economic, social and political questions; literature and art; agrarian and industrial problems; immigration; education; relations with the United States and Spanish America; travel notes".

[74] Martí's "Versos Sencillos" was written "in the town of Haines Falls, New York, where his doctor has sent [him] to regain his strength 'where streams flowed and clouds gathered in upon themeselves'".

[75] The poetry encountered in this work is "in many [ways] autobiographical and allows readers to see Martí the man and the patriot and to judge what was important to him at a crucial time in Cuban history".

By following the moral that lies within "Cultivo Rosa Blanca", Martí's vision of Cuban solidarity could be possible, creating a more peaceful society that would emanate through future generations.

After his breakthrough in Cuba literature[clarification needed], José Martí went on to contribute his works to newspapers, magazines, and books that reflected his political and social views.

We can see this in works of Martí, one of the first modernists, who conceives the literary task like an invisible unity, an expressive totality, considering the style like "a form of the content" (forma del contenido).

Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno and José Enrique Rodó saved the Martínian articles, which will have an endless value in the writings of the American continent.

[99] Martí's nuanced, often ambivalent positions on the most important issues of his day[100] have led Marxist interpreters to see a class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the main theme of his works, while others have identified a liberal-capitalist emphasis.

[111] Near the park's entrance is a plaque commemorating the site of La Casa De Pedroso, a boarding house where Martí convalesced following an attempted poisoning.

The "White Rose" name of Germany's Anti Nazi resistance group led by Sophie and Hans Scholl of Munich university was apparently inspired by Jose Marti's verse "Cultivo Una Rosa Blanca" (Versos Sencillos).