This is the story of how a Cuban poet’s “Simple Verses” became an emblem of the Cuban people and a symbol of world peace.
The waves crash against the Malecón, Havana’s mildewed esplanade and the main artery that winds from the port in Habana Vieja to the end of the city’s central business district, Vedado, five miles away. My traveling companion and I sit perched on the wall, wincing in regular intervals at the ocean spray that threatens to soak us. It’s 1 a.m., and the buzz of two strong mojitos each makes us giddy and anxious to speak to locals. Around us, the night air and waves attract a steady parade of revelers. A tipsy teenager tries to catch an airborne pork grind in his mouth. When he misses, his friends’ drunken Spanish chatter and laughter punctuate the salty night. Other couples and groups of friends walk along or just sit and chat like we do on the stretch of fortified border that serves as Havana’s late-night hangout spot.
Then, a pair of guitar-slinging street performers appear along the uneven pavement and stop in front of us. “Would you like to hear a song?” the taller troubadour asks. They whip their instruments around and begin to strum their rendition of Guantanamera, Cuba’s unofficial national anthem.
Yo soy un hombre sincero/ I am a sincere man
De donde crece la palma…/ from where the palm tree grows…
Cultivo una rosa blanca/ I cultivate a white rose
En junio como en enero… / in June and in January…
As the two musicians serenade us, two central New York university women on the hunt for the meaning of Cuba, I contemplate the lyrics and the history of Cuba’s most famous song. The words for this song were adapted from the poetry of José Martí: writer, philosopher, and most importantly, father of the Cuban people, and the apostle of its freedom. Martí, as a 38-year-old exile, penned it as part of a collection of 46 poems, in a small town in New York’s Catskills Mountains in the late 19th century. These Versos Sencillos or ‘Simple Verses’, as he named them, told the story of a sincere man from where the palm trees grow (“Poem I”), one whose verses are bright green and crimson red (“Poem 5”), one who picks a white rose for both his friend and his enemy (“Poem 39”), one who hopes and dreams with the rest of the poor people of this earth (“Poem 3”). Published four years before his death, these poems reflect Martí’s hopes for his compatriots, in Cuba and exiled like himself, who suffered under four centuries of Spanish colonial rule, and serve as one of the last things he wrote.
Banished at 18 years old, three years into the Ten Years’ War, the revolutionary spent most of his adult life barred from his native island, travelling the Spanish-speaking world and completing a law degree from the Central University of Madrid and the University of Zaragoza. He continued to publish political articles and even founded several independent newspapers across South America, all in the name of Cuban independence.
In 1895, after 24 years of exile, he returned to Cuba with the mission of liberating his island from the Spaniards and preventing another ruling class, Cuban or otherwise, from taking control — only to be shot and killed one month later during the very first battle of the revived uprising. However, Martí died before he saw his country’s freedom realized, his death propelled the Cuban people to fulfill his life’s efforts, leading to their independence after 31 attempted years.
Dark clouds gather above the Jose Marti statue in Parque Central in Centro Habana.
It wasn’t until nearly 70 years later, a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, that folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger put Marti’s call for peace--in its original Spanish--to a tune live at Carnegie Hall in 1963. Seeger dedicated the debut to the late poet, reviving his words during the height of the Cold War. It was an instant hit. The song became a symbol of peace during the Cold War, unifying Americans and immigrants, Cuban and otherwise. Canonized by subsequent covers of the track by popular musicians such as the Sandpipers, Jimmy Buffet, Buena Vista Social and Celia Cruz, Martí’s words have continuously been the chosen vessel for change in times of international uncertainty.
Just as we do on this breezy night. The sidewalk troubadours strum the final chorus and kindly accept our applause. We hand them their anticipated compensation, but instead of going on their way, they linger to talk.
“Martí!” I exclaim.
He’s our national hero, responds the lead singer. Not everyone agrees on Fidel and Raúl, but everyone agrees about Martí, he says, gesturing to a nearby statue of the revolutionary.
“Martí is all things to all people,” says Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University and a Cuban. “He’s considered an ex-patriot who fought for the freedom of his fatherland, and gave the ultimate sacrifice by dying in battle. So, Martí is sort of idolized and immortalized.”
Indeed, more than Che and Fidel, José Martí remains the omnipresent symbol of Cuban freedom and democracy. Permanently immortalized in statues and busts, the Cuban poet is present on every government property and public space, such as the Casa de las Americas and the Parque Central. Across from iron cast portraits of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos in the Plaza de la Revolución towers the José Martí memorial, a 350-foot star-shaped edifice, commissioned under Batista in the centennial year of his birth, with a kneeling Martí guarding a watchful eye over the city. Inside, paintings, sculptures, and personal objects immortalize Marti’s life, his quotes tiled in gold leaf on the walls.
The Jose Marti memorial museum features artworks detailing the revolutionary's story throughout time.
In his political speeches, Fidel Castro frequently named Martí as an influence in his own revolutionary government system, commending his anti-imperialist and sometimes anti-American beliefs. But across the Florida Straits, the writer is celebrated for his urge for democracy and free speech. For Cubans residing in the United States, Martí is a symbol of patriotism in the face of political exile. “Martí is a figure Cubans living in the United States can relate to, someone they can strive to be,” says Jorge Duany. Despite banishment from their homeland, these ex-patriots refused to relinquish their identity.
Regardless of the many interpretations, Marti’s ability to unite divided groups through the power of words is unmistakable. The poet’s writings and vision have transcended regimes, revolutions, and international conflict. In his final trip to Cuba in March 2016, President Obama paid homage to Martí in his speech in Havana, citing the compassion for both his friend and his enemy expressed in his Versos Sencillos—a poem originally used to end Cuba-Spanish enmity in the 19th century, reemployed to mend the Cuban-American rift over a century later.
"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy," Obama quoted Marti. “So, let me tell you what I believe. I can't force you to agree. But you should know what I think. I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear.
“Not everybody agrees with me on this, not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world,” reviving the words for their original purpose.