The birthplace of José Marti in Havana

Opposite the station in Havana is the birthplace of José Julián Martí y Pérez (28-1-1853 - 19-5-1895)

José Marti was the leader of the Cuban independence movement and also an esteemed poet and writer

Today he`s seen as Cuba's most important national hero

Cuba was in 1853 still a colony of Spain

He had Spanish parents, Mariano Martí and Leonor Pérez Cabrera, and was the eldest brother of seven sisters

When José was four years old his family moved from Cuba to Valencia in Spain, but two years later they returned back to the Caribbean island

Besides a great writer, poet and journalist José was also a painter

In 1867 he attended drawing and painting classes at

the Art Academy in Havana

In 1869 José published, 16 years old, his first political article in the first edition of the illegal newspaper "El Diablo Cojuelo"

It`s clear that José Martí at a young age already had a great dislike against the Spanish colonial rule in Cuba and the then common practice of slavery

Partly because in Oriente (For 1905 this province was called Santiago de Cuba) an independence rebellion had broken out, the colonial authorities weren`t served of criticism

In March 1869 José Martí was arrested on charges of treason and imprisoned

Four months later during the trial Martí accepted responsibility for these claims and in his closing argument he claimed Cuba's "Right to Independence"

He was sentenced to six years in prison

On April 11, 1895 Marti led a landing of Cuban exiles and he joined the troops of the rebel General Maximo Gomez

Martí was killed in the battle with the Spanish troops in

Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895

Because of Martí 's intellectual merit is now a bust of him

at every school in Cuba

The train station can be seen from the birthplace of José Marti