Cuba Honors José Martí on the 131st Anniversary of His Death at Dos Ríos

May 19, 2026

Every May 19, Cuba pauses to honor the memory of José Julián Martí Pérez, the Apostle of Cuban Independence. This Tuesday, May 19, 2026, marks 131 years since his death in combat at Dos Ríos, in the present-day province of Granma — one of the most defining and moving moments in Cuban history.

On that May 19, 1895, barely five weeks after landing in Cuba at Playitas de Cajobabo alongside General Máximo Gómez, Martí rode toward enemy lines at the place known as Dos Ríos, near Palma Soriano. Gómez had asked him to remain at the rear; Martí rode forward anyway. Struck by three shots fired by Spanish troops, he died on the battlefield at the age of 42 — having set foot on the island he had fought for his entire life for only five weeks.

Martí's death shook the independence movement, but did not stop it. The war he had organized, financed, and ignited with his words and his pen pressed on. Three years later, Cuba achieved formal independence from Spain. Today, more than thirteen decades on, his figure remains the most universal in the Cuban pantheon: a leading modernist poet, a brilliant journalist, an exceptional orator, a tireless political organizer, and a martyr of a cause he placed above his own life.

Born on January 28, 1853, in Havana, Martí spent much of his life in exile — in Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and above all New York, where he lived for fifteen years and from where he organized the War of 1895. He founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892, drafted its statutes, and edited the newspaper Patria. Through his chronicles sent to newspapers across Latin America, he built a political and literary thought that made him one of the essential voices of the continent.

Among his most celebrated works are the Versos sencillos (Simple Verses, 1891) — whose opening stanza inspired the lyrics of the song Guantanamera — the poetry collection Ismaelillo (1882), dedicated to his son; and La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age, 1889), a magazine for children that remains a landmark of Latin American children's literature. His journalistic prose, gathered in numerous chronicles of life in the United States and the great political debates of the era, is considered one of the peaks of modernism in the Spanish language.

May 19 is observed in Cuba and across the diaspora with tributes, readings of his texts, and visits to his tomb at Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, where the remains of General Máximo Gómez and other heroes of independence also rest. His legacy, far from belonging to any single political faction, is the shared heritage of all Cubans.

(Source: Cubadebate / Granma / EcuRed)