Rubén Martínez Villena, that young man with the sleepless eyes who died at 35, leaving behind an impressive body of work as a revolutionary and intellectual, was born on December 20, 1899, 126 years ago.
Born in Alquízar, in what is now the province of Artemisa, Villena—as he is mostly known by his second surname—moved with his family to Havana in 1905, where he played a significant role in the revolutionary struggles of the 1920s and 1930s.
From a very young age, he was involved in the fight against the corruption and subservience of Cuba's republican governments, leading the Protest of the Thirteen and founding the Grupo Minorista (Minority Group).
He attended primary school in a public school, and at just 13 years old, he entered the Havana Institute of Secondary Education. In 1916, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree and in September of the same year enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Havana.
He began writing his first verses at age 11; however, his poetic work truly took off during his university studies, and by age 21, he was already a well-known poet. To please his mother, he graduated in 1922 with a Doctorate in Civil and Public Law, graduating with honors. He then began working at the law firm of the Cuban scholar and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, where he absorbed revolutionary and progressive ideas and discovered his anti-imperialist leanings.
During this time, he came into contact with other young people and figures not affiliated with traditional political parties, such as Pablo de la Torriente Brau and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring. The year 1923 marked significant milestones in his poetic work; however, he abandoned writing poetry to dedicate himself entirely to the revolutionary struggle.
Aware of the need to establish links between the labor movement and the student body, the more radical groups in Cuban society, he participated in the First National Student Congress at the invitation of Julio Antonio Mella and later in the founding of the José Martí Popular University, dedicated to the advancement of the working class in its struggle for social justice, teaching classes and serving as the institution's secretary. He placed his legal studies at the service of Julio Antonio Mella, for whom he would serve as defense attorney on more than one occasion.
He was involved with the Veterans and Patriots Movement against the government of Alfredo Zayas, and from the time General Gerardo Machado came to power in 1925, he vehemently opposed him, ultimately leading the general strike that overthrew him in August 1933, despite suffering from severe pulmonary tuberculosis and knowing his end was near.
In June 1927, he entered the Quinta de Dependientes (a psychiatric hospital) with the illness that would eventually lead to his death. In September of that same year, he joined the Communist Party, where he was appointed Legal Advisor to the National Confederation of Cuban Workers (CNOC), the unified organization of the Cuban proletariat. He became its leading figure and natural leader, though he never assumed the position of General Secretary.
In 1928, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. However, he never held any official position due to the prejudices of the communist movement at the time, and his own, that an intellectual should not assume the highest responsibility in that organization. After the death of Julio Antonio Mella in 1929, by agreement of the Central Committee, he became the Party's principal and most active leader, carrying out arduous work despite suffering acutely from tuberculosis.
From that position of responsibility, he was tasked with organizing and leading the first political strike in Cuban history, which shook the foundations of the tyrannical regime, paralyzing the country for more than 24 hours on March 20, 1930. He later traveled to the Soviet Union to escape the terror unleashed upon him and to seek treatment for tuberculosis.
When his illness worsened in a sanatorium in the Caucasus, he received the news that it was irreversible and decided to return to Cuba to meet his daughter, be with his wife, and dedicate his last breaths to the popular effort to overthrow Machado. His life ended amidst the upheaval of the fall of the Hundred Days' Government on January 15, 1934, and the organization of the Fourth Congress of Trade Union Unity.
He had a brief but fruitful life as a poet and editor, his work encompassing both prose and poetry. He left behind highly acclaimed poems such as "The Sleepless Pupil," "The Giant," "Inadequacy of the Scale and the Iris," and "The Futile Yearning," among others.
Despite his premature death on January 16, 1934, at the age of 35, his name is etched in gold in the history of Cuba, as both a revolutionary and an intellectual.