Ruy de Lugo Viña

Native of Santo Domingo, Villaclara. He began his journalism career in Cienfuegos. Later, he practiced it in Argentina, the United States, and Mexico. In the latter country he was a writer for Excelsior and El Universal.

As a child, his parents sent him to Cienfuegos. There he studied at the most important southern schools, where he graduated as a teacher. In the early days of the Republic he practiced this profession. At the same time, he began collaborating with different publications in that city and became a member of the Liceo de la Perla del Sur.

Of a wandering existence, he traveled to Argentina where he continued his journalism endeavors and founded a magazine. The theater of the gaucho nation found in Lugo Viña a refined playwright.

In the southern nation he staged, in 1912, the works "El atentado de Nur," "Romance colonial," and "La presa del tigre." According to journalist and editor Abelardo A. García-Berry, "his notable successes, his gallant adventures and matters of honor gave his restless life a novelistic quality during that period."

He moved to New York and launched a gazette in Spanish and English. Some time later he went to Mexico City, and for several years became a writer for the newspapers Excélsior and El Universal. By that time Lugo Viña was already beginning to be considered a passionate pamphletter.

In 1918 he returned to his homeland and resumed his journalistic work at Heraldo de Cuba. Hired along with many prestigious and recognized journalists, he wrote fiery articles and editorials that served as political agitation against the sellout and unpopular government of Mario García Menocal, for which he was imprisoned when the newspaper where he worked closed on February 13, 1917.

Tomás González Rodríguez recalls this in the book La Prensa en Cuba: Bodas de Perla 1902-1932, when he states "by government order the newspapers Heraldo de Cuba, La Prensa, El Triunfo and La Nación were closed, leaving a large number of reporters without work (...) As a consequence of the closure of these newspapers, our colleagues Ángel Pérez Hernández, Ruy de Lugo Viña and Federico Ibarzábal were imprisoned and sent to jail...".

However, this served him well in 1920 when he was elected councilman of the Havana City Council. From that date on he became a promoter of his theory of universal Intermunicipalidad, on which he wrote papers and pamphlets, and gave lectures at international congresses during several trips to different countries in America and Europe. In 1926 he resumed his position as a member of the Municipal Chamber of Havana.

In the 1920s of the last century, he was elected the first Historian of the capital of Cuba, after it became evident that the city needed a chronicler to make its records more useful, dignified and cultured. Lugo Viña established relations with other countries based on the municipality.

Because of possessing "a restless character in constant activity to satisfy his journalistic spirit that demanded constant renewal of things and people," upon concluding his political mission he again became part of the editorial staff of Heraldo de Cuba and became director of this press organ and of Imparcial. Subsequently he was appointed Delegate to the League of Nations.

He also collaborated in Bohemia, Social and La Nación, and in the weekly magazine of Criticism and Art Ideas y Figuras, which circulated in Argentina from May 1909 to August 1916.

His work as a reporter became so extensive that in the Professional Directory of Journalists of Cuba, in the article "Those who were...," by Miguel A. Tamayo, when he makes an account of the most notable pens of national journalism, he recognizes Lugo Viña as one of the great Cuban columnists, along with Gustavo Robreño, Miguel de Landaluce, Mario Lezcano Abella, Alberto Riera, Enrique Fernández Arrondo, Enrique Palomares, and many more.

On the other hand, in the article "Panorama of Cuban journalism: columnist," José Conangla Fontanilles states that "Heraldo de Cuba, founded by Manuel Márquez Sterling, was later acquired and directed by Orestes Ferrara. In the columns of this newspaper they fought brilliantly in favor of the party and liberal interests, Ferrara himself and, successively, Carlos Mendieta, Wolter del Río, Enrique Mazas, Roselló, Zaydín, Ramiro Guerra and Lugo Viña, among the most notable columnists."

He also became a passionate orator. Doctor Juan J. Remos, in his article "Oratory since independence," names important Cuban speakers, such as Mario García Kohly, José Manuel Cortina, Orestes Ferrara and Merino, Juan Gualberto Gómez, Rafael Guas Inclan, Fernando Ortiz, Emilio Núñez Portuondo, among others, and notes: "In patriotic devotion few rendered such continuous and fervent tribune work as Gabriel García Galán and Ruy de Lugo Viña."

A prolific writer, among his outstanding works are Los ojos de Argos, from 1915; El tribuno de la Diplomacia, 1923; L' Intermunicipalité Universelle, 1926; and Campana rajada, from 1930.

In the second of these books cited, written while fulfilling his duties as Municipal Commissioner of the capital of the Greater Antilles in Madrid, he exalts the figure of the Creole diplomat Mario García Kohly, and goes so far as to say: "I have come to Spain on a propaganda mission, and, although Cuban, I can only—due to the limited powers of my position—speak in the name of Havana. That is why (...) I must speak of a Cuban, joining to my name the title of the position in which I am here. And thus I fulfill a double obligation: the one I have had for several years with my readers, to whom I have served in the daily dish of my constant journalism topics that would be of their liking, and the one I also owe to the functions I perform, which despite being recent deserve all my preferred attention! Although the opportunity in which I carry out this purpose is unlucky, because thus the official will have to remain silent about much of what the writer could not fail to say!" In this way is summarized the ethics that Ruy maintained between his work as a journalist and that of a politician.

"Así va el mundo" is the name of the magazine that in 1934 he inaugurated in Madrid, which gained the attention of Spanish society thanks to its sensationalist and attractive reports.

He assumed the presidency of the Deliberative Council of Cuban journalists and, on March 8, 1928, the presidency of the Seventh Congress of the Latin Press.

In the book Album of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Association of Reporters of Havana: 1902-1952, there appears the article "Historical Summary of the Association of the Press of Cuba," in which its author, Ramón Blanco Jiménez, recalls that: "great figures of journalism and letters made up the first boards of the Association of the Press of Cuba (...) These champions were surrounded by a true constellation of prestigious figures. To name only some of them: Manuel Márquez Sterling, Manuel Serafín Pichardo, Mario García Kohly, Eduardo Dolz, Ruy de Lugo Viña (...) Juan Gualberto Gómez and Gastón Mora y Varona."

He returned to Cuba in 1936. While serving as official chronicler of the famous Pro-Faro de Colón Flight, he lost his life in a tragic air accident over the peaks of Cali, Colombia, on December 29, 1937. He was only 49 years old when he died.

"A typewriter, or rather, the remains of a typewriter that flames enveloped until rendering it useless, awakens the curiosity of our colleagues on the Pacific coast. Not without emotion we remember in his honor the great tragedy of Cali; the catastrophe in which the great flight of fraternity Pro-Faro de Colón culminated. The machine, we tell them finally, belonged to our unforgettable colleague Ruy de Lugo Viña, a great journalist, a great spirit who yearned to increasingly strengthen relations between sister nations. Lugo Viña undertook this trip which was to end tragically, carrying with him a hidden dark premonition. He had struggled for so long for the project to be carried out in the realm of reality. He was never abandoned by faith in the success of noble purposes, nor by enthusiasm for difficult endeavors. Those who saw him leave could not have imagined that he carried in his mind a strange mixture of optimism and apprehension. In Rio de Janeiro, as Manuel Villaverde rightly says, he ended up publicly expressing his secret anxieties in a premonitory phrase: I see myself dying enveloped in flames," recalls Doctor Manuel Marsal in the article "Dialogue in the Journalistic Museum of the Association of Reporters of Havana."

"His fruitful work, his great concern for stimulating the best relations and strengthening the bonds of human and democratic solidarity between cities throughout the world and his extraordinary qualities as a good journalist, have earned him the homage of the most felt remembrance from the municipality of Havana with the creation of the journalism award that bears his name," which rewards "the author of the best work published each year on a free topic, of a municipal character or intended to promote the bonds that unite cities in America."

Renowned journalists have received said award. It is enough to name David Aizcorbe Borges, for his article "Music has served to unite the peoples of America," published in El País on September 11, 1943; Carlos Díaz Versón, with "In 126 years since the first Congress convened by Bolívar in 1826, 230 Pan-American meetings have been held," in the same newspaper in 1953; Arturo Alfonso Roselló with "Intermunicipalidad, an ideal of the Apostle," in 1948; Eugenio Yániz, with "It was a scientific and intercontinental rapprochement success," which appeared in Alerta on September 22, 1954; Manuel Camio Jr., with "Municipalities: key to human relations," published in Finanzas on December 24, 1955; Jesús González Scarpetta, with "Bicentennial of a Cuban in Colombia," published in Bohemia in 1956; and José Aníbal Maestri, with "Figures of urbanism," in Avance on December 5, 1957, and many other recognized pens of Cuban journalism of the time.