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Monday, September 12, 2016

Free Press - Knockout

Free Press: Knockout / Somos+

Somos+, Victor Manuel Camposeco, 10 September 2016 — In April of 1960,
from the official newspapers Hoy (Today) and Revolución along with the
leftist organization FIDEL, the demands to take by force the three
independent print media still standing seemed unstoppable. For months,
the newsrooms of those newspapers had also been infiltrated by State agents.

Diario de la Marina, the most influential conservative newspaper in
Cuba, respected by publishers and the public, which at one time had
supported Castro, had its own building in Havana, "a stately stone
building," at the corner of Paseo del Prado and Brasil Street. On May 11
it would publish a spread signed by more than 300 of its workers in
support of defending the freedom of expression. Members of FIDEL,
advised by the infiltrators, along with a huge crowd, took the building
by assault the night before and its facilities were partly destroyed.

The police refused to intervene. The next day, at the University of
Havana, the already tamed the University Students Federation, FEU, led a
grotesque celebration: between slapstick and jokes they buried a copy of
the last Diario de la Marina published.

Through the pages of Diario de la Marina had passed Pedro Henriquez
Urena, Miguel Angel Asturias, Mariategui, Borges, Alejo Carpentier and
Lezama Lima, among many others. Shortly afterwards the Rivero family,
owners and managers of the newspaper, went into exile. The "stately
stone building" was delivered with its workshops and offices to the
Communist newspaper Hoy. The life of Diario de la Marina, then
celebrating its 128th year, ended violently.

Humberto Medrano, deputy director of Prensa Libre, the largest newspaper
in Cuba, published an article the next day: "It is painful to witness
the funeral of freedom of thought in a center dedicated to culture […]
Because what was buried last night [at the University] was not a
newspaper. Symbolically what was buried was freedom of thought and
expression. The obligatory colophon of this act is the commentary in the
periodical Revolución. The title of this commentary says it all: "Prensa
Libre on the road to La Marina." They didn't have to say it, everyone
knows."

On July 4, at night, the FIDEL mob took by assault the Prensa Libre
facilities. Medrano left the building, the street teemed with
activists. One of them tried to stop him, shouting comments for the
occasion, but others let him pass. Medrano got into his car and went to
seek asylum at the nearest embassy, that of Panama. Perhaps during the
drive he recalled the six times Batista's police had stopped him, before
the triumph of the Revolution, and interrogated him for publishing
comments that displeased that other dictator.

Days later Humberto Medrano, escorted to the airport by
Panama's ambassador, left with his family on a commercial flight to
Miami. That same week he got a job as a taxi driver. He soon began
writing for a local newspaper and devoted himself since that time to the
fight for respect for human rights in Cuba. He died in Florida in 2012,
at the age of 96.

At the end of the fifties, the most important magazine in Latin America
was Bohemia. Founded in 1908, it was directed by Miguel Angel Quevedo,
the son of the founder. "Bohemia reported when reporting was dangerous,"
said Humberto Medrano in 2008. The first interview Fidel Castro gave to
a Cuban media, from the Sierra Maestra, went to Bohemia. The magazine
sent Augustine Alles Soberon to interview Fidel and he also interviewed Che.

The editorials, news reports, photographs and articles in favor of Fidel
Castro, by Alles Soberon and later others, filled dozens of pages of
the magazine. Fidel Castro himself published in Bohemia. Recently
installed in power Fidel Castro visited the magazine's offices. That was
a party, about which a large and proud story was published in the weekly
magazine itself. The courageous editorial attitude of Bohemia against
Batista, in defense of freedom of expression and in support of Castro,
was the most prominent among all the media.

On June 15, 1960 Fidel Castro celebrated the Day of Freedom of the
Press. A year after that party with Fidel in Bohemia's offices, the
crazed mob of the FIDEL organization took the workshops and offices of
the magazine by assault. Miguel Angel Quevedo took refuge in the Embassy
of Venezuela. He committed suicide in Caracas in 1969.

Taken from the site Revista Replicante

Source: Free Press: Knockout / Somos+ – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/free-press-knockout-somos/

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