Manuel Lagunilla Martínez

Lagunilla lawyer, official historian of the town of Trinidad since 2010 when he was appointed by the Municipal Assembly of People's Power, following the death of Carlos Joaquín Zerquera and continued in that position until his death.

It was an eternal love. He declared it loudly every time someone mentioned Trinidad with a word, his birthplace, home, muse. "It is the Emerald of Cuba," Manuel Lagunilla Martínez told this newspaper some time ago, who since 2010 served as the Official Historian of the third town of Cuba.

"I am a people's historian," the lawyer-historian defines himself.

This condition—which he maintained until the moment he left his home on the central Maceo street to enter the Camilo Cienfuegos Provincial General Hospital after testing positive for COVID-19—he enriched with his experiences as a lawyer and History teacher in secondary, upper secondary, and technological education.

Knowledge that drove him to delve into the rich past of a city frozen in time. Trinidad in José Martí; The Trinidadian life of the Ismaelillo; Patriot and builders of the Cuban nation: Vicente Antonio de Castro, Serafín Sánchez and the Trinidadian patriots… are among the many texts that consumed hours and hours of his research to corroborate hypotheses, mostly contrary to more well-known information.

And because of that desire to carry many people along in his passion for the history and culture of his city, he created in 2007 the gathering Los Amigos de Manolo, a monthly meeting that returned its participants to the most authentic values of a town with more than 500 years of existence.

From his office, in the old-fashioned way of the city's lawyers, full of books, an immense dark wood desk and evidence of recognitions resting on the wall with high support, he never lost track of any event in his surroundings. "I am a people's historian," he also confessed to this weekly by way of explaining why, even as the years weighed on him, he never set aside his constant studies.

It was an inheritance from those days when he directed the first Collective Law Firm in Trinidad, where he learned the intricacies of being a lawyer and notary. He knew and learned too much in all kinds of trials to hesitate in accepting the challenge of founding and heading the International Law Firm, where he retired in 2000.

Those days also inspired him to write on paper. Reading Stitcher 9mm and Guilty or Innocent? is to follow closely the case that kept Lagunilla Martínez awake in the defense of the murder of a Polish citizen in the 1990s in Trinidad; all documents that will always lead us to the man who also made the microphones of Radio Trinidad and Radio Sancti Spíritus his own.

In his voice, the Caribbean Museum City emerged with much more quality than when you walk through the steep alleys of its historic center, precisely one of his favorite sites. He was seen visiting it many times, perhaps to ease some investigative doubt or to dialogue with his ancestors. Too much love for the old town, capable of drawing from him an epitaph for posterity: "Of Trinidad I love even the stones."

His works
Trinidad in José Martí.
The Trinidadian life of the Ismaelillo
Slave uprisings in Trinidad…
Hugo Roberts Fernández, physician
Patriot and Builders of the Cuban nation: Vicente Antonio de Castro, Serafín Sánchez and the Trinidadian patriots, among other texts.

WRITTEN MEMORIES
Lagunilla wanted to discover the brew that would return the years to him, not to woo like Don Juan Tenorio, but so that it would give him time to investigate and write whatever he wanted in his office, lined with books. In a corner of it, rests the unpublished novel that recreates the life of Mariano Borrell y Lemus, the Marquis of Guáimaro, famous for his fortune, built through stocks, whips and smuggling.

"That was the first mobster there was in Cuba. He had all kinds of business. As long as you were loyal to him there was no problem; if you crossed him, he wouldn't forgive you. He was one of those who signed in 1851 the death sentence of Isidoro Armenteros, who had been his friend. In the novel I mix reality, fiction, eroticism…," he reveals.

With his ear glued to the ancestral voice of his city, he wrote Trinidad de Cuba: Traditions, myths and legends—a handful of narratives of death, revenge, love—where Hernán Cortés unfolds as the first pirate of the Caribbean, Ma' Dolores is rescued by angels in front of the firing squad, and Isabel Malibrán Muñoz, hours after being married, dies poisoned by a jealous slave. "Those stories are also part of the culture of the people, and I write for the people," he maintains.