Skip to main content
Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of José Martí in a suit and bow tie, 1892.

Portrait: Photograph, Jamaica, 1892, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · CC0

José Martí

Country
Cuba
Era
1853–1895
Tradition
Republican nationalism, Latin Americanism

Poet and organiser of the Cuban war of independence, who insisted the republic must be racially equal and warned against exchanging Spanish rule for American dominance — invoked since by every faction of Cuban politics.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Organised the Cuban Revolutionary Party in exile and launched the 1895 war of independence
  • Insisted that the Cuban republic be founded on racial equality, rejecting any distinction between Black and white Cubans
  • Warned explicitly against United States annexation, arguing Cuba must not exchange one master for another
  • Argued for civilian control over the military leadership of the independence struggle
  • Advocated Latin American unity and an authentically American rather than imported European political culture
  • Called for land distribution to smallholders and education as the basis of a free republic
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Personal liberty

78

Evidence: Well documented

Tradition and change

88

Evidence: Well documented

Nation and the world

78

Evidence: Well documented

Power and its limits

82

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Wealth and inequality, The state in the economy, Religion and the state, Environment and growth, Crime and punishment

Sources

  • José Martí, Nuestra América · 1891
  • José Martí and Máximo Gómez, Manifesto of Montecristi · 1895

Last verified: