On January 16, 1934, with his lungs destroyed by tuberculosis, died the combatant, intellectual, writer and revolutionary Rubén Martínez Villena, a poet recognized since his early youth who left a scarce work, because he focused all his energies to the revolutionary and partisan struggle.
In 1922 he graduated as Doctor in Civil and Public Law and began to work in the law firm of the Cuban scholar and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, where he was nourished with anti-imperialist, revolutionary and progressive ideas in contact with other young people and personalities such as Pablo de la Torriente Brau and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring.
Martínez Villena headed the Protest of the 13 against the outrages of the rulers of the time; he deployed a fruitful work in the Popular University José Martí and the Anti-imperialist League; he was also linked to the Falange of Revolutionary Action, the Retail Group and the Movement of Veterans and Patriots, and in 1927 he joined the Communist Party, organization where he was officially appointed Legal Advisor of the National Confederation of Workers of Cuba (CNOC).
After the death of Julio Antonio Mella, in 1929, and by agreement of the Central Committee, he became the main and most active leader of the Communist Party; despite being ill, he organized and led the strike of March 1930, which shook the foundations of the Machado regime; later he traveled to the former Soviet Union as a way to escape from police persecution and with the aim of trying to cure himself of tuberculosis.
As a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba he worked in Moscow in the Latin American Section of the III International; back in the country and seriously ill, he was the main organizer of the general strike of August 1933 that provoked the flight of the dictator Gerardo Machado.
Rubén Martínez Villena dedicated his last forces to organize the IV Workers Congress, sponsored by the National Workers Confederation of Cuba, event that concluded on this date; his funeral was attended by all the delegates with their credentials and the banners of the unions, followed by more than 20,000 workers who gave him a combative farewell in the Cemetery of Colón.
