In his journalistic works, speeches, letters and other works, José Martí alluded on many occasions to the meaning he gave to the word homeland.
Since the stage of his youth he exhibited reflections in this sense, for example in his drama, in the verse entitled Abdala, a work in which he offered a very accurate definition as to what for him constituted love of the country: ?Love, Mother, to the homeland, is not the ridiculous love to the earth, nor of the grass that our plants tread; it is the invincible hatred of those who oppress it, it is the eternal resentment of those who attack it?.
Also when he was exiled in Spain, the National Hero said: “Homeland is a community of interests, a unity of traditions, a unity of ends, a most sweet and consoling fusion of loves and hopes.”
Throughout his brief but fruitful existence, Martí always had a notable commitment to the cause of his native land, and he expressed this consistently. For him, as he specified in a work published in the newspaper Patria, in April 1892, the homeland is made of the merit of his children and it is her wealth when a son is good.
José Martí continued to reaffirm the commitment that he had and that every worthy Cuban should have with his homeland. He referred to this in the letter he wrote to his Dominican friend Federico Enrique y Carvajal, dated March 25, 1895: “For my country it will never be triumph but agony and duty.”
Martí not only offered these considerations about the homeland, but he was able to correctly combine what he said with his way of acting on a daily basis. He made the principle that he set out when he affirmed that “Doing was his best way of saying and serving” and in correspondence with them he gave up the effort to get Cuba to fight again in order to achieve independence.
