Rubén Agnelio Martínez Villena

Cuban fighter and revolutionary intellectual. He was one of the most important intellectuals of his generation, with outstanding work in poetry. Leader of the Cuban Communist Party in the struggle against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado.

In a wooden house today marked with No. 68, located on a street that later took the name of Máximo Gómez, Rubén Agnelio Martínez Villena was born in Alquízar, Artemisa province (former Havana province).

The mother, María de los Dolores de Jesús Manuel de Villena y Delmonte, was a delicate woman, of great beauty and refined gestures. From her the son inherited the features, the kindness, and the refinement of tastes.

From his father Kuciano Agustín Rogelio Martínez Echemendía, he received the rebelliousness of character, the concept of honor, that entrepreneurial energy of his, the will and putting duty above all. From him he also inherited intellectual aptitude.

At age three he goes with his father on a train on which Máximo Gómez boards, who impressed by the gaze of the little boy announces to him: "Your life will have the full light of midday." And so it was.

Forgetful of himself to devote himself to others, Rubén began to deploy his energies in 1923, a year that marked his revolutionary consecration.

He made his own a rebellious gesture of his generation: the Protest of the Thirteen, a political action in which along with other young intellectuals he publicly revealed shameless dealings of a high official of the government in office.

In January of 1924 he meets Asela Jiménez, who becomes his wife on August 1st, 1928. On June 23, 1932 his daughter Rusela Villena is born.

He was 34 years old when on the night of January 16, 1934, in a sanatorium on the outskirts of Havana, his life was extinguished like a light that gave off its last glimmer, but his ideas and seed continued to radiate to guide other generations of Cuban revolutionaries.

When he was 5 years old his family moved to Havana. He began to write his first verses at age 11. At age 12 he enrolls in the Secondary Education Institute.

In 1916 he graduates with a Bachelor's degree in Letters and Sciences and in September of that same year he enrolls in the School of Law at the University of Havana until graduating in 1922 with the title of lawyer.
In the course of his university career he began his poetic work, being at 21 years old an known poet. To please his mother he enrolls in a Bachelor's degree in Law at the University of Havana (Doctor in Civil and Public Law). He graduates in 1922.

While studying he works in the office of doctor Don Fernando Ortíz, which helped him form his anti-imperialist conscience and his patriotic character. Already from that time he walks through Havana with a straw hat but dyed brown as a protest against the high prices of the item.

His life goes through militant journalism that begins in 1817 when he publishes in the journal Evolución on July 25, 1917, the funeral oration to his sixth grade teacher.

From a young age Villena demonstrated skills for literature stimulated by his parents and fostered by the relationships established with intellectuals of the caliber of Enrique Serpa and Juan Marinello.

He had a brief but fruitful life as a poet. He left very recognized poems such as "La Pupila Insomne", "Mensaje Lírico Civil", "El gigante", "Insuficencia de la escala y el iris", among others. He renounced writing poetry to devote himself completely to the revolutionary struggle.

In 1925 he edits and directs the journal "Venezuela Libre" whose editorial office became known as the "Red Cave". Two years later, the publication "América Libre" emerged, which would have as its motto: "For inter-American popular union. Against capitalist imperialism, in favor of oppressed peoples and for the revolution of spirits".

In April of that same year he wins the poetry prize at the Floral Games of Holguín with the Medal of the Classic Sonnet.

In 1926 As a member of the Anticlerical League he drafts his pamphlet: "Cuba, Yankee Factory".

He set poetry aside and far from all adornment deployed a prose of burning denunciation in the articles from his pen, among them, "We are already becoming pariahs in our own land", in which he expressed his anti-imperialist thinking.

Also in his texts he offered a Marxist interpretation of the Cuban process, propagated the ideas of Scientific Socialism and denounced the expansionist policy of the United States.

From the office of Fernando Ortíz, where he worked first as an assistant and later private secretary, he strengthened ties with committed intellectuals. By then, he had already graduated as a lawyer and his services would henceforth be at the disposal of just causes.
Very soon his name began to be known in intellectual circles linked to the political events of the Island. The fragments contained in his poem "Mensaje lírico civil", evidence his early revolutionary commitment.

It is not by chance, then, his leadership of the group that subscribed to the Protest known as that of the 13, caused by the fraudulent administrative management of president Alfredo Zayas selling the Convent of Santa Clara.

Conscious of the need to establish ties between the labor movement and the student body, the most radical groups of Cuban society, he participates in the First National Congress of Students invited by Julio Antonio Mella.

With the passage of time, his law studies would be placed at the disposal of Julio Antonio Mella, of whom he would serve as defense lawyer on more than one occasion.

The Phalanx of Revolutionary Action, the Minoritarian Group and the Movement of Veterans and Patriots would become a space to learn of Villena's dissatisfaction with the situation existing in Cuba.

But the maturation of his political activity came in 1925 with the creation of the first Communist Party of Cuba together with Carlos Baliño. From then on, he would serve as one of the fundamental leaders of the organization.

For Gerardo Machado he had already become a permanent adversary, as he directs the general strike against him; he writes a letter of protest against the extension of powers and serves as legal advisor to the Workers' Federation of Havana and the National Workers' Commission of Cuba, all of which earns him the dictator's hatred.

Although he remains active and unbending, his health is resentful, the strength of before does not accompany him, he exhausts quickly. Little by little the pulmonary ailments lacerate his already weak constitution, but he does not abandon his commitment to the most oppressed.

He is constantly forced to change residence to avoid falling into the hands of Machado's henchmen.

Together with a group of intellectuals, he also participates in the founding of the Minoritarian Group, as he himself defined it, it was small in the number of its members, but large in the work it proposed.

In May of 1924 he travels to Florida to learn to pilot an airplane in order to bomb military targets in Havana. He is arrested and has to return to Cuba.

June of 1927 sees him admitted to the Quinta de Dependientes with the illness that would lead him to death: tuberculosis.

In 1928 he is elected member of the Central Committee of the PCC and upon the death of Julio Antonio Mella, in 1929 he is tasked with organizing the first political strike in the history of Cuba.

He travels to the USSR as a way to escape the terror unleashed upon him and with the objective of trying to cure himself of tuberculosis. In Moscow he works in the Latin American Section of the KOMINTERN.
When his illness worsens he returns to the sanatorium in the Caucasus. He receives the news that it is irreversible and decides to return to Cuba.

Despite his illness and knowing his imminent end, he organized and directed the Revolutionary General Strike that overthrows Machado on August 12, 1933. He participates against all the advice of his doctor Gustavo Aldereguía in the reception of Mella's ashes in 1933.

In 1933 with his health greatly deteriorated, which forces him to stay in bed, he directs the meetings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

That same year, in December, he attends his last meeting before being confined to the Sanatorio La Esperanza.

When on January 16 his eyes closed forever, the teachings and example he left would be a beacon and guide in the struggle undertaken to make real what was set forth in the Mensaje lírico civil: "There is need of a charge to kill scoundrels, to complete the work of revolutions, to wash the honor of those who suffer outrage, to clean the stubborn crust of colonialism."