From his Facebook profile, minutes after receiving the 2022 Provincial History Award granted by the Branch of the Union of Historians of Cuba (UNHIC) in Las Tunas, the outstanding researcher Omar Lutgardo Villafruela Infante thanked his teachers.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- "First of all, my father, Antonio Villafruela Peña, who intuited it and brought me closer to the local history, to its people, introduced me to mambises and relevant figures of the time.

"For Serafina Navarrete, my second-grade teacher, from Santiago, who first told me about José Martí. And for Monserrat Ginestá, my fourth and fifth-grade teacher, from Camagüey, who visited Mexico during vacations and at the beginning of the course talked to us about the culture and history of the Aztec land."

He dedicated lines to Víctor Marrero Zaldívar, Ernesto Carralero Bosch, José Abreu Cardet, and José Guillermo Montero Quesada; and told the press moments later: "History is in the people, in the street."

This is well known by this man from Chaparra (actually, Jesús Menéndez municipality), who is the historian par excellence of the emblematic Ameijeiras family, according to many people's opinion, and has also delved into the sugar heritage, the union struggles, and the different moments that have marked the life of the former Chaparra sugar mill, tinging with singularities the existence of its people until today.

Villafruela received the Award with gratitude. It is a certainty that he still has much to contribute to the Revolution that propitiated his development as an academic and human being.

"The son of a humble worker, sack sewer of a sugar mill, a neighbor of a peripheral neighborhood, he went on to study a university career, achieved teaching and scientific degrees, and has written more than a dozen books."