In the 19th century, the San Lázaro quarries in Havana were a site of forced labor for political prisoners under the Spanish colonial regime. The young José Martí was sent there due to a letter interpreted as a death threat. Today, the site houses a museum preserving objects and documents from his life.
In the 19th century, under Spanish colonial rule, the San Lázaro quarries in Havana served as a place where political prisoners carried out sentences of forced labor. José Martí, at just 16 years old, was sentenced to six years there because of a letter he signed, found in the home of his friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez. The letter was seen as a death threat against Carlos de Castro, a student who had joined the Volunteer Corps of the Spanish army, whom Martí and Domínguez called a traitor.
The museum, located on Príncipe Street between Hospital and Espada, preserves documents related to Martí's life and work, family photographs, fragments of letters to his mother, his son, friends, and his teacher Rafael María de Mendive. Personal items include his prisoner's clothing and pieces of the chain fastened to his body. Notable exhibits are the table and chair he used during his time in the United States.
Cuban visual artists have recreated the figure of José Martí in their own aesthetic styles. A striking photograph shows Martí at age 16—slight and fragile—with a chain around his waist and a shackle on his ankle. Despite his youth, he was already very mature and responsible; his health was damaged, leaving aftereffects such as conjunctivitis from the quarry dust, yet his spirit was elevated by the experience.
After his deportation to Spain, Martí wrote 'The Political Prison in Cuba,' a text denouncing the horrors his companions endured in that penitentiary regime, suffering more from others' pain than his own. As a curiosity, a fragment of a letter to his mother, Leonor Pérez, is engraved on one of the exterior statues: “Look at me, mother, and for love do not weep. If a slave at my age and my doctrines, I filled your martyred heart with thorns, think that flowers are born among thorns.” — José Martí.
What was once a quarry of sorrow now stretches out as a garden with beautiful pathways; the stones carry the meaning of freedom. Martí's pure air still penetrates us today, when we need it most.
