Manuel Enrique Isla Pérez lived just 20 years. He was born on July 15, 1933 at the Santa Eugenia farm, in the Bagáez neighborhood of the municipality of Nueva Paz. From here they move to Los Palos where he meets his comrade Fidel Castro Ruz and other leading revolutionary leaders who made training and shooting practices in that place.   

Manuel Isla Pérez was part of a peasant family of seven brothers, immersed in extreme poverty.

He carried out his first studies in Los Palos, which he later abandoned to help his parents in the agricultural work on the Santa Elena farm. He there fulfilled orders of his co-owner , the orthodox militant Mario Hidalgo Gato, who took him to the firing practices carried out by the future assailants to the Moncada Garrison.

In one of the sessions he asked for permission to shoot, it was kind of a prize, because the boy had spent the whole day standing there on the railroad line, taking care that nobody came, without saying a word.

Then they took a rifle and put in seven shots. The boy threw well. Then he proposed one day that he wanted to go wherever they were going. Then they discussed and talked with Fidel and said: "Look Fidel, that guy raised this." Fidel said: "What did you think?" They told him: "he has courage, decision" then Fidel said: "take him into account".

On Sunday, July 19, 1953, the training at the Santa Elena farm concluded. That day those present discussed how to take weapons out of the scene. Manuel Isla, who was close to where the subject was been discussing, cutting a load of grass, approached and said: I will carry the weapons, I will put them inside the herbs.

On Tuesday, July 21, these weapons were picked up at Isla's house by Ernesto Tizol and subsequently taken to the Siboney Farm, to be used later in the attack on the Moncada Garrison.

On July 24, 1953, at 12 noon, a note is sent to Nueva Paz saying that seven companions should leave as soon as possible for Havana, to fulfill the program of the Revolution. Manuel Isla Pérez was among them.

Assigned to the group that had as objective the taking of the Moncada, once the operation failed he could escape from the combat area and he wander dispersed with some other fighters in Santiago of Cuba, but at the end he was imprisoned.

His corpse was presented by Army personnel in El Conuco, rural area of ​​El Caney, with five other bodies, on Thursday, July 30, 1953, as if they had fallen in combat. Fifteen days earlier, Isla Pérez had turned 20 years old.

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