Manuel Antonio Herrera Martínez, historian and cultural promoter par excellence, became one of the personalities who would lay the foundations for future historical studies in the province.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- The roots of his training go back to the teachings received from Don Carlos and Valeria García, prestigious teachers from Las Tunas in the early twentieth century, who stimulated his desire for knowledge. An attitude that was confirmed later during his incursion into the Pious Schools of Guanabacoa, at the secondary level.

Qualified by Professor José A. Rodríguez García, as a distinguished student in Grammar and Literature at the Mimó School in Havana, he obtained his Baccalaureate in 1923. He was called to be part of the evaluating tribunal of the El Salvador campus, in December 1927, the date on which he already ventured into teaching.

He began the teaching profession by creating the Rodríguez García School, in honor of his former teacher from Havana. And in January 1937, he crowned his efforts by founding the emblematic Victoria de Las Tunas School, where a small Natural History museum was installed.

During the decades from 30 to 50, he wrote articles of historical and cultural nature in the local press. Accompanied by Eligio Orive, he explored to specify the exact places where the remains of the Spanish forts and defenses that were destroyed here by General Calixto García in 1897 were located.

In 1951, he was granted the status of Historian of the municipality and the right to be part of the Municipal Board of History. On October 10, 1960, at the request of the Culture Commission of the Revolutionary Government, he received the Distinction Favorite Son of Victoria de Las Tunas.