Havana Cuba. – They are not journalists or presenters or communicators, they are spokespersons and, because they are well aware of their condition, the role they play, they are the visible face of the repressors, what is more, they are simply repressors, and as such they should be treated wherever they go. they go, wherever they try to hide or “get rid” of the past that, in the best cases, causes them insomnia, regret, embarrassment.
And I’m not just talking about the boys and girls who make that “Con Filo” infamy, who narrate with too much enthusiasm the May Day parade or Humberto Lopez —universal paradigm of what a journalist should never be—; I am pointing out to everyone who appears under the stamp of “reporter” or “communicator” on official television, or who puts his signature on one of those “flat press” pages that ceased to be when they became “official organs ”.
Everyone, without exception, knows what they are doing and for what perverse purposes they are “using” them, and if saying “enough” and leaving will always be a dignified decision, which earns or returns respect, doing it here in Cuba (and not ” outside”) and assuming the consequences is much more so, because in principle it makes the rupture, the weariness, the nausea credible.
It is not worth saying that they were doing their job, while the job of a journalist should never be to misinform, manipulate, lie, threaten, wait for permission, unconditionally submit to the rules of a ruler and his repressive body, accept as “truth” what which he effortlessly obtains from those “official sources” approved by the Communist Party and its political police. We are overflowing with those obediences here, and there will be much more with a new Penal Code and a press law that essentially criminalizes not only dissent and independence but also ethical and moral duty.
Now that almost the entire Island is fleeing in a stampede, those who wish to do so appear with advantages for having been the puppets they were, and because they are sure that this will help them when the judge decides to measure the credibility of their fears.
But, regardless of who these “desertions” and “repentances” may suit —and for whatever reasons— we must not forget that none of them feels real fear, except for the possibility of being denied asylum or leaving. to light the darkness of a past of complicity.
No one can say that they feel afraid —without exceptions—, since they themselves have been the channels and even the sources of all the fears that surround us, and even if we have given them faces and voices in our minds (and in our nightmares). ) is because these spokesmen have placed themselves at the service of terror, they are its incarnation.
Because they are not only the “embodied” of our fears when hearing the bad news from their mouths (which they always are around here), when reading the “official note”, but also their empty stares and threatening intonations, the giggles of joy, their conformism, their political “judgments” loaded with ideological prejudices that remain, like cruel resonances, in our heads.
Thus, those who have served to sow fear in others cannot be rewarded with clemency, based on their “fears”. It is not even worth saying that they obeyed out of love for a vocation, or a profession that they never exercised in good faith.
How can someone say that they love journalism when with their exercise they are aware that they are annihilating it? I understand that many young people, in their ignorance of what their true destiny will be, wish to study Journalism in Cuba sometime, even practice it upon graduation, but I refuse to accept that, when they discover themselves in their unfortunate role, they are not ashamed to continue representing it. over and over again, aware of the damage they do to those who do not have too many options to choose where to get information.
We owe the annihilation of journalism in the “official media” not only to the communists, but also to those who pretend to practice it. And because they are who they say they are, then the crime is greater, especially when they accept the criminalization of the exercise if it is actually practiced.
If it weren’t for the exceptionally brave people who don’t measure consequences when it comes to seeking the truth and sharing it, today we would have to say that journalism in Cuba is dead, but fortunately it is not. Although the regime and its spokesmen have done everything they could to exterminate it.
What was the headquarters of the newspaper The countryat 158 Calle Reina, is perhaps one of the best visual representations of what happened to the Cuban press after 1959. The desolate building, like its entire environment, and even beyond it, is a total ruin where you can still see some destruction of old printing presses in the middle of a garbage dump.
The image of abandonment, together with a sign that can be read in a box selling newspapers and magazines on the same avenue —so close in multiple aspects— do not need a single word to describe what the journalistic exercise becomes when a totalitarian regime kidnaps him to place him at its service.
The panorama becomes even worse when those who, calling themselves “professionals”, are satisfied with “doing the job” for which they are paid and rewarded (both ridiculously) in order to justify (and deny) how much responsibility they carry with them when talking about repression, violation of human rights and lack of freedoms in Cuba.
Because there can be no repression or dictatorship without the complicity of “journalists” who agree to distort the profession to the point of confusing it with the “task” of the messenger of a political faction and even with that of the repressor himself, as long as he lends at least his face (and even in some cases the “talent”) so that it continues hidden in the shadows of its mediocrities. Paraphrasing the poster that I mentioned lines above: these spokespersons are not the press, neither new nor old, they are only the faces of fear.
OPINION ARTICLE
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