A poster commemorating Jose Marti's life.

The Failed Revolution

The great Cuban poet and revolutionary Jose Marti returns to Cuba with veterans of the Ten Years War, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, after organizing a national movement for independence from Spain. Uprisings in February fail, and the Mambi leaders, as the revolutionaries were called, land in April. Marti, who had spent many years raising funds and support from Cuban and leftist communities in the United States and Spain, is killed on May 19th of 1895. By 1898, the revolutionaries controlled half the island despite the 200,000 Spanish troops sent against them. That year, the US sent the warship USS Maine to Havana. Its explosion, which killed 258 troops aboard, remains a mystery to this day, but was used as grounds by President William McKinley to attack. US troops were sent to other Spanish colonies, including Puerto Rico and the Philippines where their own wars of independence were under way. The United States took both of the latter countries as colonies, killing hundreds of thousands of local rebels in the ensuing years, and in December of 1898, took it upon itself to sign the Treaty of Paris with Spain which recognized Cuban independence. Of course, no Cuban was involved in the signing.