Ruben Martínez Villena
Havana, Jan 16 (PL) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel today highlighted the figure of the outstanding poet and communist Ruben Martínez Villena, on the occasion of the 89th anniversary of his death, victim of tuberculosis.
In his Twitter account, the president said: "A day of tribute to a great man of letters and the Cuban Revolution: Ruben Martinez Villena, communist, lawyer, poet, and leader of the Revolution of 1933. Roa defined him as "the highest and noblest hope of Cuban youth. His work inspires."
The president pointed out that " according to the press of the time, the funeral procession with the mortal remains of Villena, veiled in the Palacio de Los Torcedores, became a great demonstration of popular mourning".
According to what Cuba’s Communist Party recalls on its official website on Monday, Villena "lost his last battle against tuberculosis on January 16, 1934, when he was almost 35 years old, which he would have been on December 20".
It adds that "thus ended the physical existence of the great revolutionary and intellectual leader, who in the words of his comrade Raul Roa: "Defied death a thousand times and happily burned his life", a metaphor that could not have been more realistic to understand the existence of this extraordinary being".
He started in the political struggles when he was only 23 years old in 1923, as one of the main protagonists of the Protest of the Thirteen, a group of young intellectuals who broke into an official act presided by a corrupt official of the government of the day, and interrupted his speech. Then, the young revolutionary imputed his lack of moral authority.
That moment represents the irruption in the national life of the first generation that would retake the revolutionary thought after the frustration of the independence ideal of José Martí with the United States’ intervention in the war of independence and the establishment of a republic submitted to its interests.
With his tireless political work, Villena became a key figure of that generation.
