Mambí cannon fired by Martí's son during the 1895 Independence War

At Vicente García Park, at the mercy of the weather and its inclemency, is the tangible proof of the passage through these lands of José Francisco Martí Zayas-Bazán, the first-born son of the Apostle.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- I am referring to the Mambí cannon, reduced to one of the ends of the place, the artifact that was decisive in the combats of the Seizure of Las Tunas led by Calixto Garcia and his men in 1897.

It was he, whom his father affectionately called "Ismaelillo," one of the four artillerymen who made the now-aged piece a powerful tool against the fighting armies of the Spanish Metropolis and who, for several days, relentlessly harassed a powerful enemy and owner of the entire square.

José Martí's sonHe was then 18 years old and had arrived in Cuba enlisted in an expedition as a soldier. It is said that on Eastern soil he was given Baconao, his father's white horse; the most loving man with whom he shared, between comings and goings, a family complicity of only five years and three months.

The Master's passionate correspondence records his conviction that he would die young and have few children. For this reason, perhaps, the hours of difficult childbirth that his Carmen had that November 22, 1878, to give life to the little one, the only fruit of the marriage "with the pain of Homeland" that always had, despite the inherent poetry of love, evident realistic flight, were especially anguishing.

Pepe and the beautiful Camagüeyana had met in Mexico City at the end of 1875 at the home of the girl's father, a Cuban exile who had participated in the Ten Years' War. Moreover, after two years of courtship, they were married in the Metropolitan Sangrado Parish, in the Aztec capital.

They affirm that the nickname of José Francisco has a direct relation with Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, and calls to be "strong before the destiny", something that, surely, accompanied the boy grown before time, that left captain of the noble feat that organized The Master, sick and cautious.

"Ismaelillo" was deaf after the events of Las Tunas. An ailment that accompanied him throughout his life, even though he sought on several occasions the advice of different doctors to reverse the ailment. It was not easy so many days there, between the noise of the cannon and the din of intense combat, determinant, in the end, for the Spanish capitulation on the Island.

"Ismaelillo" died in Havana, after a peaceful life, far from the cruel arenas of politics and a long marriage, from which no descendants were left.

It was October 1945 when he was given an ecclesiastical burial in the Colón cemetery. He died at the age of 66, of lung disease. In addition, it is said, he was a scholar of his father's work and a staunch defender of his thought.