HAVANA, Cuba.- So limited are the possibilities of having new authors who are attractive, controversial, or at least curious for the Cuban public, that the official website Cubadebate has published an interview with none other than Michel Torres Corona, the hated host of the program “Con Filo”.
In the absence of true writers, of young people who contribute something valuable to the panorama of fiction or journalism, the state press makes visible an unknown person who came to the public sphere due to “the context and communicative needs”, because the regime needs someone who has the stomach to try to seduce the new generations with the faded stories of the Cuban revolution and the imperial conspiracies to destabilize, from social networks, what remains standing only thanks to repression.
Michel Torres is that emissary of late Castroism who nor the journalist from Cubadebatenor the Ecured platform have been able to decorate with a more or less decent resume, or enlightening data on the circumstances that led him to be a Law graduate, in 2017, to a stellar space on Cuban television that the Cubans abhorred from its first installment.
Beyond his birth in Maternidad Obrera and two or three (pseudo) sentimental notes, there are no vestiges of humanity in Michel Torres Corona. He himself acknowledges that he did not exercise his profession for a single day, although he does not explain the reason or what he dedicated himself to in those years. The interviewer, for her part, does not have the mission to delve into the personal undergrowth; so she changes the subject without elegance and falls into the program “Con Filo”, which has been broadcast for less than a year. That is to say, between 2017 and yesterday, Michel Torres did nothing, except write in some blogs and alternative media “of the real ones, of those who do not pay”; to know what they are, because he did not mention any.
Out of nowhere, a young man with no media experience took on the role of a credentialed journalist under the smug gaze of the same regime that denies the quality of many independent reporters because of their political beliefs. Reporters who write and express themselves infinitely better than Michel Torres, who, moreover, acknowledged having begun his approach to journalism by giving his opinion on his Facebook wall (“any opinionologist,” he defined himself), an action that has cost all independent journalists interrogations, threats, fines or attacks at the hands of State Security.
Such is Michel Torres: a lawyer who never practiced, and a journalist without academic training. However, his alleged collaborations in blogs and alternative media were “rewarded” with the possibility of writing in the Granma, official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba; the same newspaper that spreads the ideological embarrassments of Ernesto Estévez Rams, Iroel Sánchez, Raúl Antonio Capote or Teresa Melo.
Nor does he offer details of his arrival on television; he only assures that due to “life hazards” he went from being a substitute in the program “Con Filo”, to main host and scriptwriter. All this in less than nine months, considering that the first broadcast of the program was on August 11, 2021, one month after the social outbreak that shook the dictatorship like never before in 63 years.
This meteoric rise would be understandable if Michel Torres were talented. But is not. His performance from the communicational point of view bores the very defenders of Castroism. He has no punch among the youth, no charisma, no power to convince. The older ones change the channel as soon as the program begins, and absolutely none of their “analyses” transcend the television setting to come to life in the public arena.
The presence of Michel Torres in the media is only justified by the scarcity of better prepared and unscrupulous people to serve Castroism. Despite his indisputable mediocrity, he has all the privileges. He is even the director of the Nuevo Milenio publishing house, and although he does not have solid work, he is already thinking of making a compilation of the articles he has published in Granma. Why not? After all, that is paid for by Liborio.
This is the kind of obscure character, ideologically crippled and without a respectable academic background, that the University of Nottingham has invited as “keynote speaker” to the XV Annual Conference of the Cuba Research Forum, scheduled to be held next July. Anyone who has listened to the interventions of Michel Torres on the program “Con Filo” knows that he will take advantage of that important stage to lie without restraint about the reality of Cuba, blame the blockade, deny the existence of political prisoners and refer to July 11 as a outbreak of popular anger paid for by the enemies of the Revolution.
Michel Torres is a “senior cyberclaria” who has probably invented studies that she did not take and skills that she does not possess. His tentative presence at the University of Nottingham could be facilitated by the same interests that have filled the panels of LASA (Latin American Studies Association) with graduate speakers from the “Ñico López” Higher School of the Party.
The caviar left is betting heavily so that Castroism does not fall. But the good news is that Michel Torres represents the archetype of what is left, a cheap and unattractive model, 100% disposable, a bad investment. If that is the best they have, the media war is won for those who yearn for a free Cuba.
OPINION ARTICLE
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