Protest of the Thirteen

The Protest of the Thirteen, which occurred on March 18, 1923, was a pivotal event in Cuban history, and was the first significant action of the newly established Cuban intellectual class against the government of Cuba, since Cuba had earned its independence from Spain. Led by the young poet and lawyer Rubén Martínez Villena, a group of young intellectual writers – which would later be called the Group of Thirteen – publicly denounced the administration of President Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso for its corrupt practices, notably what they alleged to be the fraudulent purchase of the Convento de [Santa Clara de Asis|Santa Clara convent] at an inflated price, which was emblematic of the widespread corruption during that era. The protestors were also concerned about the future of the convent itself, which was the first one constructed in all of Cuba.

Events

The protest took place during a ceremony organized by the Cuban Women's Club at the Academy of Sciences in Havana, organized to honor the Uruguayan teacher Paulina Luisi. During the event, when Secretary of Justice Erasmo Regüeiferos, who had endorsed the controversial purchase of the Santa Clara convent, was about to speak, Villena and his colleagues stood up and interrupted the proceedings. Villena delivered a speech condemning Regüeiferos's actions, stating:
Following this declaration, the group exited the venue, effectively disrupting the ceremony and drawing public attention to their cause.
After leaving the event, the group proceeded to the offices of the newspaper Heraldo de Cuba, where Villena drafted the Manifesto of the Protest of the Thirteen, which articulated their dissatisfaction with the government's corrupt actions. The manifesto emphasized their honor and satisfaction in initiating a movement that opposed officials who were "violators, plunderers, immoral, who tend with their acts to debase the Homeland." This document was signed by thirteen of the fifteen participants, with two abstaining due to personal reasons.
The signatories to the manifesto were;

On March 21, 1923, Regüeiferos filed a formal indictment against Rubén Martínez Villena and the other participants, and a day later Judge Antonio García Sola opened a case against the thirteen for the crime of insults to the Secretary of Justice. The penalty requested for each of them was 180 days of imprisonment, the maximum sanction in this type of crime. Initially, Fernando Ortiz assumed the defense of the accused, in the Court of Instruction of the First Section of the Havana Court. Numerous intellectuals sent messages to the Heraldo de Cuba offering their support to the accused. In the last days of March, Regüeiferos resigned from his position, while the group members had to appear every Monday, until mid-1924, in the court where the lawsuit was filed against them, at which time it was dismissed.
The thirteen members here, and the two that were absent from the signing of the manifesto, eventually became leaders in Cuban society, each occupying different spheres of that society, each with their own ideological differences – some of which would create further divisions in Cuban society itself.
Villena later wrote a poem in Diario de la Marina, which read;
Villena, on April 1, then established the Cuban Action Phalange, or the Falange de Acción Cubana, to carry on the work of the Protest of the Thirteen.
The communist government of Cuba today marks this protest as the awakening of this generation of Cuban intellectuals against governmental corruption. The Group of Thirteen is also considered the parent group of the Minorista Group, which was commonly referred to as the "Vanguard of the Cuban Intelligentsia."