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Honorable Burial for
the National Cuban Hero: Jose Marti
Jose Marti died on May 19, 1895, during the Dos Rios battle
against more than 800 Spanish soldiers. It was impossible to
rescue him from the enemies and thus began the sad story of the
five burials of the Cuban National Hero.
General Maximo Gomez refers to these events in his diary as the
sensitive loss of a friend, a fellowman and patriot in a sad
speech on the lack of the best partner and the soul of the
independence movement.
A colonel at the head of the Spanish forces, Jose Ximenez de
Sandoval, once talked about how lucky they had been by killing
“agitator and propagandist Don Jose Marti”, as he used to call
him.
His body was wrapped in a hammock and placed in the doorway of
the house of a Cuban prefect, Rosalio Pacheco, a few meters from
the place he died.
Then, he was taken to a town called Remanganaguas tied to a
horse, and buried under the corpse of a soldier of the enemy, in
the morning of May 20.
A captain from the army, Enrique Santue, identified the corpse
of the revolutionary leader as he fell, and faced with the doubt
military Dr. Pablo Aurelio Valencia exhumed, identified him and
prepared the body.
According to researches by historian Francisco Ibarra, from the
eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba, published in his
book “Los cinco enterramientos de Jose Marti” (Jose Marti five
burials), his heart and entrails remained in that cemetery in
current municipality of Contramaestre.
Jose Marti’s body was transferred to the city of Santiago de
Cuba on May 23, in a cedar coffin with no ornaments, which cost
eight pesos.
As it arrived in the village of San Luis, his body was guarded
in the patio of a military garrison and later on embarked by
train with the escort of 81 soldiers.
Late at night he was moved to the Santa Ifigenia cemetery and in
the morning of May 27 by orders of Military Governor, he was
buried there in the grave 134 in the South, east and North
Gallery.
The Spanish officers “generously” donated the tombstone.
In 1907, for sanitary reasons, the graves of this cemetery were
demolished, except for the one with the remains of the Cuban
National Hero.
His remains were once more removed in order to guarantee their
preservation and were taken to the monument built by the Hall of
the province of Santaigo, in the presence of his son Jose Marti
Francisco Zayas Bazan and many other personalities from the
city.
On September 8, 1947, he was once again disinterred and buried
temporarily in the Retablo de los Heroes, where he stay until
the inauguration on June 30, 1951,of the Mausoleum that guards
his remains today.
There stands, as one of the most important exponents of funerary
arts in Cuba, with its hexagonal shape in representation of the
attributes of the former Cuban provinces and showing inside the
national symbols and shields of American nations.
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