Our Region

Starting condition

From the desire of the highest authorities of the Martí municipality, I gave myself to the beautiful task of beginning the creation of a monument to our apostle José Martí. The chosen space was being occupied by an image of Martí made with iron plates and that came from an Open Tribune made in the municipality

José Julián Martí Pérez
He was born on Calle Paula La Habana, January 28, 1853. His father was Mariano Martí, a native of (Valencia, Spain), and his mother Leonor Pérez Cabrera, of (Tenerife, Canary Islands). He was a democratic republican politician, thinker, writer, journalist, philosopher and Cuban poet, creator of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and organizer of the War of '95. He also belonged to the literary movement of modernism.
In 1866 he enrolled in the Institute of Second Education in Havana. He also enters the Elementary Drawing class at the Professional School of Painting and Sculpture in Havana, better known as San Alejandro.
His political vision was a classical liberal and democrat. Furthermore, his political and propaganda work shows these three priorities: the unity of all Cubans as a nation in the post-war republican civic project; the termination of Spanish colonial rule; and avoid American and Spanish expansions. The information about his great capacity for work and frugality is almost unanimous, which, being evident, together with his persuasive word, earned him recognition by the majority of his compatriots.
On May 19, 1895 a Spanish column was deployed in the Dos Ríos area, near Palma Soriano, where the Cubans camped. Martí was marching between Gómez and Major General Bartolomé Masó. Upon arriving at the scene of the action, Gómez instructed him to stop and stay in the agreed place. However, in the course of the combat, he separated from the bulk of the Cuban forces, accompanied only by his assistant Ángel de la Guardia. Marti rode, unknowingly, towards a group of Spaniards hidden in the undergrowth and was hit by three shots that caused fatal injuries. His corpse could not be rescued by the mambises. After several burials, he was finally buried on the 27th, in niche number 134 of the southern gallery of the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba.

The proposal of public space

-The space located in a privileged place imposed its rules, it was necessary to work on a monumental scale and to make reading from a distance perceptible. That is why the work is discovered from the distance we are from it.
-Local materials and simple solutions will be used in order to reduce costs.


Design concept

José Martí's bust is a faithful copy of the anti-imperialist Martí monument erected in front of the United States Embassy in Havana and which, responding to a wish from our Commander in Chief, has been placed in different places. This undoubtedly adds to the work an added value from the emotional and historical point of view.

Descriptive synthesis of the monument to Martí in the Matanzas municipality that bears his name
In a first reading we would be seeing a V as a symbol of victory, which little by little becomes an outbreak with elements that remind us to a certain extent of the degrees of the Commander in Chief. Once we are at a safe distance, we would be seeing clearly the strong anti-imperialist expression of our Martí with a look of victory, in the right place where a star could be. In this way we would be attending a resurrection, with all the symbolism that this implies.
The plants that are part of the monument, as well as the location; they respond to the expressed concept, give better visibility so that the work can be viewed from the most important visuals, and function as an aesthetic complement.

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