Lantigua is also the author of seven novels, including the a crime series starring Willie Cuesta, a Cuban American private investigator based in Miami.
At age 25, he moved to Oaxaca, Mexico where for two years he worked as a mountain guide in the Sierra Madre, leading camping trips.
From 1999 to 2002, Lantigua freelanced, covering the Elian Gonzalez affair in Miami for Salon; the Bush-Gore election controversy for The Nation; and the 9/11 terrorists' presence in Florida for Newsweek.
That team also produced a series in 2005 about birth defects and other injuries caused by pesticides, largely among immigrant field hands in Florida, which again won the Kennedy and Hispanic Journalists awards in 2006.
[2] Lantigua's novel "The Lady from Buenos Aires," Arte Publico, 2007, about the children of the disappeared in Argentina, won the International Latino Book Award for Mystery, 2008, and his novel "On Hallowed Ground," Arte Publico, 2011, about a kidnapping in the Colombian community in Miami, won the same award in 2012.