[Sculpture of Jose Marti on horseback]

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José Martí appears here mounted on horseback, a pose that casts him as the man of action he became in his final years rather than only the poet and essayist. Martí, a journalist and organizer, died in combat at Dos Ríos in 1895 while fighting for Cuban independence from Spain, and he has since been honored across Latin America as a symbol of national and continental freedom. Equestrian monuments to him were common in the decades after his death, and they helped shape how Cuba remembered him. This print dates from sometime between 1920 and 1957, when public sculpture like this was widely photographed and circulated.

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