Miguel Coyula Laguno

A journalist with a patriotic heart. An outstanding patriot of the Municipality of Regla. Today the people of Regla go to the central park Guaicanamar to shower him with affection. A simple monument to the Commander of the Liberation Army is preserved there, inaugurated on June 11, 1949, thanks to the contribution of a Committee created by local institutions and the City Council of that time.

Born to Italian parents established in Regla since the nineteenth century, Miguel Coyula Llaguno was born in that town, at a time when Cubans in the liberation struggle had already accumulated eight years of uninterrupted battle.

Those vocations, that of patriot, along with that of journalist, emerged early in young Miguel Coyula. The first accompanied him until his final days, as he served in the forces of generals José Maceo, Calixto García and Mario García Menocal, reaching the rank of commander of the Liberation Army. And the second, journalism, he practiced even under the most adverse conditions, in the fields of the insurrection.

It follows that his contributions appeared in the liberation press: El Cubano Libre and Patria, although he also did so, with the same patriotic spirit, in the republican press: La Discusión, La Lucha, La Prensa, La Semana, El Mundo and in the weekly Bohemia.

He never accepted any monetary compensation for his services in the Liberation Army: whenever an attempt was made to assign him a life pension, he rejected it, as well as any association of his name with the dictatorial regime of Gerardo Machado that devastated Cuba in the 1930s.

Nor did he accept a proposal to occupy the vice presidency of the country, under the Menocal government, since he had not been elected by the people. José Zacarías Tallet pointed this out in his column in the newspaper El Mundo, on February 6, 1944.

"Coyula, a journalist by nature—and forgive us the apparently disrespectful qualifier—began his journalism career in 1894, (...) if we recall correctly in a newspaper by Juan Gualberto Gómez; in the struggle he did not cease to practice journalism in El Cubano Libre, and upon returning to civilian life with the rank of commander that honors him and whom he honors, he continued his journalistic career, having figured since then in the editorial staff of some newspaper, where his pen, like his word on every occasion, have guided opinion through the channels of honesty, decency and decorum to which his illustrious personality is abundantly entitled."

The Mambí

An uncle of his, Pedro, was intimate with José Martí, who visited him at his house on Santuario Street in that Havana locality. From that friendship an anecdote remained that was recalled with regularity at family gatherings. Pedro, who appeared in 1879 among the founders of the local Lyceum, asked Martí for the opening speech of the new artistic and literary institution. On the day in question, a strong storm paralyzed the crossing of steamships across the bay. As the time approached to begin the event, the board of directors met to make a decision in the face of the certain absence of the main speaker. At the appointed hour Martí arrived, soaked and with disheveled hair: he had walked from Havana, going around the bay, to keep his commitment.

Supporters of independence grow in Regla. They conspire in the Lyceum and in the barber shop of Bonifacio Mojica. In January 1895 the mother of the Camagüey mambí general Bernabé Varona, "Bembeta," who was executed in the 1868 conflict, dies there. During the funeral, a prominent integrist, second commander of the Volunteers battalion, bursts in with offensive words toward the deceased and the Cuban cause, which provokes the angry response of the patriots present. Coyula, who is only 18 years old, condemns the incident from the pages of La Protesta, a newspaper directed by Manuel Sanguily. He is heavily compromised and the start of the war organized by Martí, on February 24 of that same year, forces him to leave Cuba.

He will return on the second of the five voyages of the legendary steamship Three Friends. He will fight first in the infantry of general José Maceo and later, successively, under the orders of generals Calixto García and Mario García Menocal, who would end up making him his aide. Among other combats, Coyula participated in the bloody action of El Guamo, which reported great losses to the liberators. He was, alongside Menocal, in the battle of Lagunas de Ítabo, where the column of Spanish general García Aldave was destroyed. He participated, under Calixto's command, in the preparations for the attack on Las Tunas; at the behest of that glorious warrior, he was part of the Flying Column of Oriente and was present at the taking of Bayamo.

With Menocal, he left on June 8, 1896 from Las Palmas, Holguín, to make the invasion to the West with nearly 200 companions. The crossing of the Trocha from Júcaro to Morón was an impressive action: Menocal crossed it on the 9th with only a guide, and returned to fetch his General Staff—Coyula among them—to cross it a third time under heavy fire from Spanish forces, who harassed the group incessantly for half an hour, resulting in one dead and one wounded.

Subsequently, commander Pedro Pablo Interián passed with half the troops, and commander Cosme Aballí with the other half. In Havana they were received at La Jaula camp by the chief of the Military Department of the West, general Mayía Rodríguez. Already in this part of the Island, Coyula participates in numerous combats: Sabana de Becerra, Yareyal, Crucero del Macío, Aguacate.

In the struggle, as well as in exile, Coyula did not abandon his journalistic work. He collaborated here frequently in El Cubano Libre, directed by Mariano Corona, without neglecting his other tasks. He is chief of staff of the Fifth Corps of the Liberation Army, which covers the divisions of Havana and Matanzas. When the war ends, Menocal enters the capital of the Island with his men and occupies the Dragoons barracks. With him, of course, is commander Miguel Coyula. He is 22 years old.

Already in the Republic, Coyula, without ever breaking ties with Menocal, immerses himself in political life and continues in journalism. In 1905 he arrives for the first time at the Chamber of Representatives and in 1917, upon taking the presidency of that legislative body, he categorically refuses to order the dismissal of employees who did not belong to his party, as was customary in the Republic.

He condemns with vigor, in 1925, the murder of conservative journalist Armando André, Machado's first political crime, and does not delay in denouncing Orestes Ferrara for using resources and labor diverted from the Capitol in the construction of the small palace on San Miguel and Ronda.

He will reach the point of asking Machado for his resignation in a public letter that he inserts in the pages of Bohemia and which almost cost him and the director of that magazine their lives. Mendieta will make him a member of the Council of State, but he resigns irrevocably when scientist Carlos de la Torre and three other councilors are expelled from that body.

He will aspire to the Senate in 1936. The National Democratic Ensemble, for which he aspires, does not triumph in those elections, but the electoral maneuvering allows that organization to access Parliament and secures a seat for Coyula as senator for the minority, since he was the most voted candidate of his party.

This occurred amid a severe national economic crisis, where his family, like that of so many other Cubans, suffered hardships. It was the only time that this man wavered, although in private, about his strict principles: he gathered his relatives, explained the situation to them, set forth his position on the matter—which could only be to reject the seat for which he had not initially been elected—and, in consideration of the privations that all were enduring, asked for their opinion. He had the satisfaction of receiving unanimous support.

He died in Marianao, on November 23, 1948. He was laid in state in the Hall of Lost Steps of the Capitol and his funeral was an impressive demonstration of mourning.

Miguel Coyula Llaguno also wrote poems to be read in the family setting and left abundant paperwork in letters, documents and many other texts revealing his perpetual concern for national problems.

Coyula received numerous distinctions, among them some foreign ones. He reached the presidency of the First Congress of Journalists, in 1941, as well as of the II Pan-American Press Congress in 1943.

In reality, Miguel Coyula enters the history of Cuban journalism not only for his literary qualities, but—and above all—because of the example of integrity and ethics that throughout his entire career and life he demonstrated in each one of his civic acts.

Day of Integrity

The date of his death was chosen as the Day of Integrity. His name was given to an avenue and a park, where a bust of his was placed, a work by sculptor Santí; both, avenue and park, are located near the house where he died. Other busts were erected in the park located in front of the City Hall of Regla and in the vestibule of the offices and workshops of the newspaper El Mundo, at Virtudes corner Águila. A fire truck from the fire department also received his name, as well as schools and streets in Havana and Santa Clara.

Documents and decorations of the patriot are exhibited today in the Regla Museum. That fire truck, which was used during the Batista dictatorship to suppress student demonstrations on Infanta and San Lázaro, no longer exists, and Coyula Avenue was renamed, in 1957, Avenue 19.

In Regla, his hometown, where a street bears his name, a bust financed by citizen contributions was unveiled in the Guaicanamar Municipal Park, which reads:
"Cuba demands, to save itself, hearts that feel patriotism."

The Ministry of Communications of Cuba issued in 1954 two postage stamps with his portrait. Today many schools throughout the country bear his name.

Integrity is synonymous with honesty, righteousness, rectitude, goodness. When one speaks of upright men in Cuba, the figure of Miguel Coyula comes immediately to mind.

He gave proof, throughout his life, of a proverbial integrity, and, without fanfare or explosive vanities, did in each moment what his conscience dictated. He never had any economic income other than what derived from his fees as a journalist or from the emoluments of the public offices in which he served, rejecting, a rare thing among politicians of the time, any personal benefit that emanated from the trafficking of influence. When Cuban politics became more mired than usual, he took refuge in journalism—he died with a newspaper in his hands—without aspiring to anything.

He reached, in the War of '95, the rank of commander of the Liberation Army, and until his death he maintained erect and vibrant the ideals of his youth and continued to see the cure for the country's ills in the exemplary lesson of the founders of the nation.

Not a few examples illustrate the decorum and decency of this man. Alfredo Zayas' presidency ends and the Chamber of Representatives, dominated by the liberals, approves, with applause, a National Tribute Law that granted the conservative Miguel Coyula a life pension of 500 pesos monthly. The Senate was disposed to approve the project, but Coyula himself opposed it: he argued that it did not seem appropriate to him to accept that pension at a moment when adjustments in the country's economy were being announced.

Shortly thereafter, and with Machado already in power, the Senate took up the matter again in order to approve the aforementioned National Tribute Law. New opposition from Coyula. The project, if approved, would oblige him to thank Machado for the gesture and he did not want to be in debt or obligated to a politician whom he had so much opposed and would continue to oppose.

Years passed. The Conservative Party of Mario García Menocal becomes the National Democratic Ensemble, and through that political group Coyula is elected delegate to the convention that would draft the 1940 Constitution. Of 76 elected delegates, 35 correspond to the Government and 41 to the opposition, in which figures Menocal's party. But Batista, anxious to assure himself the presidency in the general elections to come, offers the menocalistas, if they support his aspiration, the Vice Presidency of the Republic, the Mayoralty of Havana, three provincial governments and 12 senatorship. Menocal accepts and his delegates in the Constitutional Assembly join the ranks of the Government because, says old Menocal to his supporters who judge the pact brew too strong:
"it is to do the country a service to give Batista a constitutional way out in order to free Cuba from the military predominance that he personifies"

It is a very hard blow for Miguel Coyula to assimilate. Loyalty to his chief and friend clashes with principles that oblige him to publicly reject the alliance with a man who had already shown his true colors. That pact, personally, meant for him a sure election as senator, and possibly the presidency of the Senate. Coyula finds no other way out than to resign from the upper positions he held in the ranks of menocalismo.

Other parties then try to win him over; they offer him an assured senatorship and even the candidacy as vice president with Ramón Grau San Martín. He prefers to retire to private life; anything rather than confront Menocal, whose funeral he would conduct shortly thereafter with his voice choked by emotion.