José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez (January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban patriot, freedom fighter and poet. Although he never lived to see Cuba free, he is considered the national hero.
Biography.
Jose Marti was born in Havana in 1853. At age sixteen he was imprisoned for opposing Spanish colonial rule during the Ten Years War (1868-1878) and later he was exiled to Spain. There he published a pamphlet exposing the horrors of political imprisonment in Cuba, which he himself had experienced.
In 1878 he returned to Cuba under a general amnesty and worked for a law firm, but he conspired against the Spanish authorities and again was banished to Spain in September 1879. He fled exile in Spain and came first to France and then to the United States. Marti went back to Miami where he lived from 1881 to 1895.