The life of Father Félix Varela y Morales in Philadelphia, one of the first Latinos to live in the city, is yet to be known.

We couldn't even say it was forgotten: It was never written or documented in the first place, making it all but impossible for anybody to catch up using Google or Wikipedia, for example.

"The perfect stranger," as we have called him before in the pages of AL DÍA, is nevertheless a man who had the audacity to conceive a simple dream, the courage to spell it out in writing, and the grit to do as much as it was within his power to do (and much more) during his brief passing on planet earth.

He was prescient about the Hispanic community of the 21st century, and imagined and also proposed the creation of a new nation, Cuba, before such a nation came into existence 70 years later.

Had he had the resources and/or tools to execute it, he could have seen Cuba independent before he died. Or perhaps, he would have liberated the Irish immigrants 50 years earlier.

From the little we know about Varela we, here at AL DÍA,  drew enough inspiration to launch the "National Journalism Awards for Excellence in Spanish-language Writing and Reporting" six years ago at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Three years later, the award was renamed the "National Award for Excellence in American Journalism on Latino & Multicultural Issues."

Last week, I personally went to Miami to launch yet a new phase of the VARELA Award USA, this one more than ever inspired by the very partial and fragmented knowledge of who Father Varela was.

The forum for the announcement was "Hispanicize", a gathering of hundreds of bloggers, journalists, marketers and public relations specialists ­— few of whom had the most remote idea of who this pioneering Latino in America was.

It was the same with the more mature and circumspect attendees of the "International Symposium of Online Journalism (ISOJ)" hosted this past weekend by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas in the College of Communications of the University of Texas in Austin.

In this second forum, the name of this new phase of the VARELA Awards was revealed, to the skepticism of experts who know close to nothing about this 19th century man who is revered in Cuba.

A dozen of the smartest people in the profession, nevertheless, found out about Félix Varela for the first time through the award created by the AL DÍA Foundation in his memory, presented as well in Austin, Texas.

Yet a third national forum got wind of what the AL DÍA Foundation is up to.

This busy founder and chairman flew from Austin to San Diego, Calif., to do another tour in favor of the VARELA Awards.This time it was the "Hispanic Association on Corporate Reponsibility (HACR)" celebrating this week in San Diego its prestigious national Symposium on the State of Advancement of the Latino community in the nation.

The life of Varela is not to be read, but to be imagined.

Each of us can write a page on the blank canvas in front of us, and, in the process, help bring back from oblivion the life, the work, and a first real image of the tender and brave soul of this universal American of Latino ancestry.