Sometimes when we think of an intellectual of universal stature, we imagine only a person of thought, but Juan Marinello Vidaurreta was a communist revolutionary linked to popular struggles from his youth. He suffered imprisonment, exile, and persecution, and remained faithful to his ideals until his death.
Born in the small town of Jicotea, Las Villas province, on November 2, 1898, Marinello actively participated throughout his nearly 79 years of life in movements that defended popular causes. This work, combined with his extensive output as a politician, lawyer, essayist, poet, journalist, and educator, made him one of Cuba's most brilliant intellectuals until his death in Havana on March 27, 1977.
He completed his primary and secondary education in Santa Clara and then attended the University of Havana, where he earned doctorates in Civil Law (as an outstanding student), Public Law, and Philosophy and Letters. In the early 1920s, he furthered his studies at the Central University of Madrid.
Upon his return, he joined the intellectual vanguard of young people that emerged in public life between the 1920s and 1930s, a period he called the critical decade, during which important events took place, including the founding of the National Confederation of Cuban Workers and the Communist Party. Marinello collaborated with student leader Julio Antonio Mella in the University Reform movement, and together with Mella and Rubén Martínez Villena in 1923, he helped create the José Martí People's University.
Marinello was one of the intellectuals of the Protest of the Thirteen and in 1923, along with Rubén Martínez Villena, founded and led the Cuban Action Phalanx. He was a member of the Minority Group and the Veterans and Patriots Movement, and fought against the governments of Alfredo Zayas, Gerardo Machado, and Carlos Mendieta, for which he suffered imprisonment on the Isle of Pines and forced exile.
A communist militant from a young age, he presided over the Revolutionary Union Party and was a delegate to the 1940 Constituent Assembly and a representative to the Chamber. He presided over the Popular Socialist Party from 1944 until its dissolution.
He was elected senator for the province of Camagüey. In 1946, he became Vice President of the Senate and was the Popular Socialist Party's candidate for President of the Republic in 1948. After the coup d'état of March 10, 1952, his activities against the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship led to his imprisonment on several occasions.
Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, he worked with Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro on reorganizing the country's political party structure. He served as Rector of the University of Havana, ambassador, and permanent delegate of Cuba to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where he was Vice President of its Executive Board and participated in its general conferences of 1964, 1966, 1968, and 1970. He also took part in the World Colloquium on Lenin convened by UNESCO in Tampere, Finland, in April 1970.
He was Vice President of the National Assembly of People's Power and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba from its founding in 1965 until his death.
Marinello's work as an educator was extensive, encompassing several countries where he taught classes and delivered lectures. He directed or contributed to important progressive publications in Cuba, Latin America, and Europe. In Cuba, these include the Revista de Avance (1927-1930), a significant publication in cultural life; the newspaper La Palabra, the voice of the working masses; the magazine Masas, the organ of the Anti-Imperialist League of Cuba; the magazine Mediodía, which had a notable influence on national politics; the magazine Mensaje, during the Batista dictatorship; and he contributed to La Carta Semanal, the clandestine newspaper of Cuban communists.
He was also a permanent member of the international jury for the Lenin Peace Prize and president of the José Martí International Colloquium at the University of Bordeaux. He represented the Cuban Peace Movement at important international events such as those held in Warsaw, Mexico City, Budapest, Brussels, Helsinki, and Berlin. He headed the Cuban delegation to the People's Conference held in Havana in 1962.
He received important decorations and recognitions from cultural, academic, and educational institutions, both in Cuba and abroad, and left behind a substantial body of work in poetry, essays, and research, including several essential reference books on the work and thought of José Martí.
His comrades in arms describe him as an active communist militant, a champion of unity as a decisive and strategic element for seizing political opportunities, without compromising his principles. They emphasize his humanist essence, which set guidelines for the exercise of political power, linked to his Marxist-Leninist ideology in the pursuit of justice and revolutionary ethics. He bequeathed all of this to future generations in his extensive written work, filled with concepts, ideas, and assessments that distinguish it by its enduring relevance.
Of Marinello, Army General Raúl Castro said: "He was a man of his time, because he exercised his high intellectual stature and his fine artistic sensitivity, like Rubén Martínez Villena, sincerely detached from vanities and demands; because he always remained faithful to his own work, and as in it, merit never clashed with modesty, nor honors with humility in his conduct."