Marti was born in 1853. His political career began at the tender age of 15, when he helped to start an anti-colonial newspaper in Havana. He was sentenced to hard labour in a stone quarry for his political activities, something which pretty near ruined his health for the rest of his life.

After being released he travelled through Europe, returned to Cuba a couple of times for brief periods before settling in New York in 1881.

Marti's career reflects the total love-hate relationship between Cuba and its huge northern neighbour - a twist that extends to this day. Marti was initially enamoured of American society and praised its freedom and opportunities. But in later years, after long periods spent among the Cuban immigrants even then in Florida, he came to think of the United States as the 'turbulent and brutal North'.

In 1892, Marti judged the time was right to found the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Three years later, he landed in Cuba with a party of supporters and took to the mountains as a guerrilla movement. By all accounts, he found the going hard: his backpack was heavy and he often fell on forced marches from place to place to evade Spanish soldiers.

On May 19, 1895, Marti went into battle for the first time and was shot dead almost immediately. But the seeds had been sown. Within a year, the rebels had gained control of most of the island of Cuba.

The Spanish repression that followed in 1896 was particularly brutal - it has been estimated that as much as a fifth of Cuba's population at the time died in that year. The huge scale of atrocities, together with the Spanish sinking of an American ship in Havana harbour, eventually encouraged the Americans to intervene, leading to the Spanish-American war of 1898 which finally expelled them from the island. The United States formally granted Cuba independence in 1902.