Carlos Manuel Trelles: the Matanzas-born bibliographer who showed Cuba to the world.

One of the names that still shakes the halls of the Gener y del Monte Provincial Public Library is that of Carlos Manuel Trelles Govín. His contributions as a bibliographer, an outstanding representative of Cuban literature and a revolutionary, make him an obligatory reference for the new generations.

Born on February 15th, 1866, he is undoubtedly one of the most important figures of Cuban culture and also one of the great defenders of patriotism in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Collaborator of the Aurora del Yumurí, Correo de Matanzas, Artes y Letras and Diario de Matanzas, Trelles founded in 1886 the Círculo de la Juventud Liberal of the city, which before being dissolved by the governor welcomed speakers such as Fermín Valdés Domínguez, Antonio Zambrana and Manuel Sanguily.

And in his restlessness of founding and loving he would also create later in Matanzas a delegation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, created by Martí in 1892. All this earned him persecutions and pains, such as having to leave his land to take refuge in Tampa; although there he did not stop fighting and founded the Pedro Betancourt Revolutionary Club with the purpose of raising funds for the pro-independence cause.

It was after his return to Cuba, to his beloved Matanzas, that after taking care of some sugar businesses he worked as a librarian. His imprint on Gener y del Monte transcends space and time.

Researcher Caridad Contreras Llorca, a graduate in Art History, Librarianship and Information Sciences and a specialist in the Rare and Valuable Collection Room of the institution, comments on Trelles’ valuable revolutionary work, in addition to his work as director of this institution, a period of which he leaves fabulous memories, as well as a broad movement of the library collection and its services.

«He is not only a cultured man, he is not only the very great Cuban bibliographer, but also a scholar with a series of thoughts related to education, to the social role of libraries, who clarifies the purpose of that public institution and in these years he is able to deploy a work as patriotic as the one he had done previously, by compiling everything that had been written about Cuba outside the country, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

«He also publishes, with dizzying speed, the eight volumes on the Cuban bibliography of the 19th century, a monumental work, since it deals with the entire bibliography of a nation and it is made by a single person and without the resources we have now; such studies include all the editions made in Cuba or outside it, by national authors.»

He was also appointed councilman of the City Council, the collaboration of Carlos Manuel Trelles in different publications of notable importance of the time, his responsibility as delegate of the House of Representatives, in addition to his participation as delegate for Cuba to the First International Congress of Social Economy and to the Congress of History and Geography of America, both in Argentina, not to mention the countless titles and honors he received throughout his life, speak of the virtue and sapience of this man from Matanzas.

As Contreras Llorca also pointed out, his efforts are the best way to show how much had been achieved in the Cuban nation, despite its colonial condition, subjugated by a major power.

In the eight volumes mentioned, for example, «not only the literary work is collected, but also scientific, pedagogical, of all the social, exact and applied sciences. Likewise, he continued making this compilation on the early years of the twentieth century. There is no better way to say that this is a civilized people, that has culture, that not only handles the machete, but also thought, language and knowledge.

«He also devoted himself to making specialized bibliographies such as the scientific and historical library, where in addition to recording authors and titles, he made annotations, comments on those books. In addition, he prepared the first bibliography of the black race, in which he demonstrates the progress of that ethnic group in the country, after the abolition of slavery.»

The specialist highlights at the same time other works in which she collects for example facts of the history of the country and of Matanzas, as the war of independence in this region, and includes, with exquisite detail from an important battle to a skirmish.

He could have stayed in Havana, for the functions that he carried out there, but he always returned to Matanzas. However, Trelles is not only important for this city or for the libraries, but he is also one of the very first figures of relevance for the nation, for compiling so much information about Cuba and showing it to the world, a genuine way of showing it off.

Written by Jeidi Suárez.