From that glorious birth on Paula Street, in 1853, to the heartbreaking flashes of three gunshots in Dos Ríos, in 1895, only 42 years passed in the life of a man who stood up with his Homeland for all times. He needed no more.
In that first-born son of a family of eight children, Cuba found a moral support to defend the dignity of a people and a continent, sullied by the oppressive whip of foreign dominions.
In his masterful pen, made of heartfelt verses and powerful prose, history found the x-ray of a bleeding nation, the truth of the poor, the wonder of childhood, the indispensable doctrines to fight for sovereignty... and the beauty of the words love, unity, freedom and homeland.
In that giant of soul and thought -whose pupils "burned" when he witnessed the horrors of slavery as a child- the island also found a symbol of colossal sacrifice that still amazes.
It is enough to remember the young 17-year-old boy who suffered imprisonment with an iron shackle attached to his leg, or the same revolutionary who was later deported from his nation and, from exile, managed to unite wills, found a Party and organize a necessary war. Such was the vitality of the Apostle's leadership.
Deeply marked by the fate of the indigenous peoples and the pains of our America, that ambassador of freedom and Latin American ideas was perhaps greatest when he sealed, with his intense activity as a patriot, one of his written phrases that best portrays him: "the first duty of a man of these days is to be a man of his time". Such was the integrity of the most universal of Cubans.
Small of stature and giant of heart; wide forehead and narrow eyes; clean speech and categorical character, he was called Delegate, and even President, but always with respect and admiration. It could not be otherwise with someone who put the pains of his body before the cause of emancipation, dazzling with his sacrificed struggle tobacco growers and emigrants, scholars and former slaves, generals of war, women and children, and patriots of other nations.
For that reason it has been said many times -and with total certainty, that Dos Rios was not its end. Since that May 19, the generous blood of the Master fertilized the beloved land and its essence radiated later other combats and other men who honored, with the independence of Cuba, his legacy.
It is the vital presence that continues to accompany us between rivers and mountains... and in the daily battles of a country in Revolution, which has as a reference the life and work of that extraordinary man we call José Martí.
