in 1891, he immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. In 1892, Marín received the tragic news that his brother Lt. Wencenlao Marín had perished in the Battle of Manigua in Cuba. This motivated Marín to travel to New York City and enlist in the Cuban Liberation Army. The New York headquarters of the Cuban Army was situated in the New York offices of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The person registering the volunteers when Marín went to enlist was José Martí. The meeting of the two was the beginning of a friendship which was cut short by the death of Martí in 1895. During his stay in the city, he collaborated in the La Gaceta del Pueblo a separatist newspaper which published the narrative "New York from Within". Marín is credited with designing the Puerto Rican flag. He used the Cuban flag as a model and inverted the colors in the flag's triangle and stripes. He presented the flag in New York's "Chimney Corner Hall", a gathering place of independence advocates. The flag soon came to symbolize the ideals of the Puerto Rican independence movement. Some people believe that Manuel Besosa was the designer, based on a letter written by his daughter in which she says, "...my father asked me to sew together some pieces of cloth, white, red and blue that he brought himself, this tiny flag had 5 alterned stripes, red and white, and a triangle with a five point star within it...". However, there is a letter written by Juan de Mata Terreforte, Vice-President of the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico, a chapter of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which clearly gives credit to Marín. The original contents of the letter in Spanish are the following: which, translated in English, states the following: However, it may never be truly known who designed the flag. According to some accounts on June 12, 1892, Antonio Vélez Alvarado was at his apartment at 219 Twenty-Third Street in Manhattan, when he stared at a Cuban flag for a few minutes, and then took a look at the blank wall in which it was being displayed. Vélez Alvarado suddenly perceived an optical illusion, in which he perceived the image of the Cuban flag with the colors in the flag's triangle and stripes inverted. Almost immediately he visited a nearby merchant, Domingo Peraza, from whom he bought some crepe paper to build a crude prototype. He later