Where did José Martí grow up and live?

📍Havana Old Town, Cuba

1853 – 1895

“I was born José Julián Martí Pérez on the 28th of January 1853 in Havana, the son of Spanish immigrants. I became the apostle of Cuban independence — the poet, journalist, and revolutionary organiser whose writings inspired the 1895 uprising against Spanish colonial rule. I lived most of my adult life in exile — in Spain, Guatemala, Venezuela, and fifteen years in New York, where I organised the Cuban Revolutionary Party and wrote the essays and poetry that made Cuban independence imaginable. I returned to Cuba in April 1895 and was killed in one of the first engagements of the war on the 19th of May 1895 at Dos Ríos. I was forty-two. My death made me a martyr and my words outlasted every government. The Havana of my birth and the New York of my exile were the two cities that formed me.”

👍 LovedThe poetry and prose that made Cuban independence imaginable to those who had stopped imagining it. The New York exile years and the community of Cuban revolutionaries. The Havana childhood and the colonial city that formed my politics.

👎 DislikedThe exile years that separated me from the island I was writing to free. The death before independence was achieved. The knowledge that what I had started would be completed by others.

Map showing where José Martí lived — Havana Old Town, Cuba

🗺️ Approximate location today

Satellite view of José Martí's home at Havana Old Town, Cuba

Sources: Ferrer, A. Cuba: An American History (2021), Scribner; Foner, P. Our America: Writings on Latin America and the Struggle for Cuban Independence (1977), Monthly Review Press