... poisoned by the patriots in the midst of the independence events of 1810. His house in Barcelona was burned by order of Colonel Agustín Arriojas. This forced Matilde to return to her family in Cumaná, where, a few years later, she married the surgeon Alonso Ruiz Moreno.

By one of those lucky chances to the country, Juan Manuel Cajigal has appeared among us, a young man filled with the noble desire to be useful to his country, whose record proves his outstanding abilities are the best criterion in these inquiries, they make him a precious find for the country and present him as the most calculated to fill the indicated position.

Most of the students cannot afford the classic works, nor the academic collections, because of their great cost, and for Venezuela it would be very easy to allocate two thousand pesos for the time being to buy books and instruments ...

... it will not be out of place to include my opinions about what can be done to improve the situation of the students and offer them the necessary incentives so that they continue with zeal and consecration the important and difficult studies that must form their institution. It is not enough that the Government, desirous of giving impetus to public education, and with the wise object of forming a body of engineers, has achieved the establishment of a school, fixed the subjects that must be taught there and indicated the final reward for those who apply and laboriously reach the term indicated for their incorporation into it. It is necessary, in addition, to ensure a comfortable existence while the studies last, that by having them sheltered from misery, leave them the necessary time to dedicate themselves exclusively to the tasks that are demanded.

The Academy of Mathematics suspends its activities and Cajigal himself must abandon books and scientific instruments to lead a battalion destined to defend the civilian and legitimate government.

... during this time he worked on the War and Navy, and Foreign Relations commissions. His work in Congress was linked to issues as important such as the Michelena-Pombo Treaty, the Organic Law of the Provinces, and the exile of Archbishop Ramón Ignacio Méndez. He also acted in the Electoral Colleges, in the Provincial Council, and in the General Directorate of Public Instruction (1840) .... He founded and edited, together with José Hermenegildo García and Fermín Toro, the newspaper 'Correo de Caracas' (1838-1841). He wrote about the layout of the highway to the valleys of Aragua, on the Caracas-La Guaira highway, and was the first to point out the advantages of the railway between that port and the capital.

In a burst of nationalistic enthusiasm, Cajigal replied that he preferred the glory of founding mathematical studies in his homeland to all the honour that standing out as a man of science in Paris could bring him. To reciprocate the entertainment of his hosts, Cagigal ordered the manufacture of gold and silver tableware engraved with his initials: JMC. The Venezuelan also dedicated himself to updating his scientific knowledge, visiting museums and libraries and participating in Parisian social life.

The misfortune began with calm, shy monomania. He believed that people were going to persecute him, that they wanted to kill him. And those ideas were slowly isolating such a luminous intelligence from the scientific and social world.

Unfortunately, and like other great men from the East such as Antonio José de Sucre and José Antonio Anzoátegui, the remains of the Barcelona wise man Juan Manuel Cagigal are not in Caracas, in the National Pantheon. In 1889, the then President of Venezuela, Doctor Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl, decreed his transfer to the temple reserved for illustrious Venezuelans, for which his bones were exhumed from the Río Caribe Church where they had rested since his death, next to his mother and his stepfather, however, as confirmed by research carried out in 1952 by his biographer Don Ángel Grisanti for the National Academy of History, the remains of Juan Manuel Cagigal were lost, but not his indelible example of dignity, dedication and work for current generations.

This study consists of a description and critical analysis of the book 'Memoria sobre las integrales limitadas' Ⓣ, written by Juan Manuel Cajigal (1803-1856) and published posthumously in 1929. Prepared on a date not yet precisely determined, it is the only mathematical writing of his that still exists. It initially circulated in handwritten form and was used as a text in the Academy of Mathematics of Caracas. His 'Memoria' does not pretend to be an original contribution to mathematics having a didactic purpose and to disseminate the advances in Integral Calculus of its time, closely following Cauchy's ideas.

Juan Manuel Cajigal was not a man with the qualities of a warrior, nor of a politician, despite the fact that he suffered through an era in which without these two "qualities" it was practically impossible to survive. Still, with all the "progress" of which we boast, we see how certain luminaries of science, certain people anointed with intellect, find it impossible to escape from the small world of partisan diatribe. They end up changing the solitary rooms of libraries and laboratories, the silent battle of ideas, for the bitter confrontation with the personal interests of groups possessed of foolish ambitions: the tropical caprice of leadership, the enjoyment of honours and prebends.

It was impossible for Juan Manuel Cajigal to overcome the stupidity of his time, and his tragic end is nothing but the result of a man before the defeated vision of his Destiny. He is a man who watches his talent shattered by the pack of dogs playing games. His life and his talent is irretrievably lost. He never had peace to think, to order his ideas in the midst of the demanding discipline required by the study of the exact sciences.