Mexico City, Mexico.- The official journalist and film critic Rolando Perez Betancourtremembered for hosting the program La Séptima Puerta for years, died this Saturday in Havana at the age of 77, reported Granma newspaper.
Pérez Betancourt, although he had a career of six decades within the official propaganda system, was better known after he began to host the television program “La séptima puerta” every Friday.
“I never really liked television. I am not a television man, it is not my medium. I prefer to sit in front of a keyboard, which is where I like to think. They came looking for me from the ICRT. I set a condition that has never been met: that the program not come out after ten at night, one of the big problems it has today. People see my comment, they see a part of the film, but they don’t see the film. Then they call me on the phone to ask me where the movie ended. But television has made it possible for me to be a literate of taste, ”he said in an interview with Cubaperiodistas, published in 2018.
Rolando was born in September 1945 and graduated in journalism from the University of Havana in 1973. Although he had previously worked as a typographer and later as a reporter. After the triumph of the revolution, he was one of the pillars of the official propaganda ecosystem that exterminated the press in Cuba.
In 1965, he participated in the founding of the Granma newspaper after the merger of “Hoy” and “Revolución”. In said newspaper he published periodically for decades, mostly articles on the seventh art. Since 1973 he maintained an opinion column and film criticism called “Chronicle of a Spectator”, where he addressed different phenomena related to Cuban and international cinematography.
“His critical and journalistic work constitutes a legacy that, together with that of other greats in the profession, will accompany the work of the new generations of reporters,” Granma specifies.
The critic was also always faithful to the island’s dictatorship that controls all the media. Such a position was evidenced more than once in his opinion articles.
On January 25, 2019, the Cubadebate digital portal published the article “Uncomfortable Perennials”, from the renowned spokesperson. The text made reference to those who rejected the campaign of the regime for the approval of the new Constitution and, in addition to questioning them, it assured that the progressive advances on the Island were visible.
On television, Pérez Betancourt also hosted and wrote “Tanda del Domingo” and “Noche de Cine”.
For his career, he received the José Martí National Prize for Journalism (2007), the José Antonio Fernández de Castro National Prize for Cultural Journalism (1999) and the Distinction for National Culture.
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