2023-05-12 04:59:25
in pages of rebel youth who already longed for the finger walks of the “old man” among the corondels, the spicy suggestion in the shadow of a headline, the chiseling with laughter of the caricature of some character… his son Enriquito would tell, one day in 2006, that the oldest memory what she had of him was the everlasting rattle of an Underwood typewriter, from eight in the morning until late at night—every day of her childhood!
This is how anchored the journalism of Enrique Núñez Rodríguez was to the roots of Cubans and their struggles, so that when, many years after he himself had literally taken root in our land, someone wrote that one of his books was enjoyable « although” it showed his revolutionary ideological affiliation, one realized that not everyone understands the moral of the true joke.
Because Núñez Rodríguez was what everyone says —writer, screenwriter, playwright, journalist, Cuban “joder”… wow, the greatest witty one—, but first he was what he himself said: revolutionary. In any case, he was, together with the people, the great chronicler of the great thing that happened.
He would have to be witty and revolutionary to stay in Cuba in 1959, when many figures with less talent than him —and less salary, since then he earned 2,500 pesos! as exclusive editor of Crusellas y Compañía— turned their backs on the new light of El Morro.
His natural ingenuity and the good economic situation he had in the days of the Neocolonial Republic did not prevent him from becoming very serious on some issues: he supported the revolutionary project, became a member of the Popular Socialist and Orthodox parties and risked everything, and it was not jokingly, collaborating with the much persecuted —and ultimately successful— July 26 Movement.
He was born on May 13, 1923 in Quemado de Güines, a town in the former province of Las Villas, and his early look at the joy and heartbreak of the people and the nation would lead him to understand that humor “serves to say the greatest truths in the world.
The more time passes since his death, the more that resounding grace on paper is missed — now that both grace and paper seem to be in short supply — but what Cuban journalism greatly misses is that trademark that was his column, as a practice agreed and scheduled to regularly share a space, an author, a reader, an emotion…
Enrique Núñez Rodríguez was in himself a column of professional height, but there is no doubt that for a long time his texts —like a rebellion of letters— surpassed him.
In a certain interview, he lamented the decline of columnism in the Cuban press and even encouraged himself to outline an editorial program that, today, a few should undertake: “…if I were to create a newspaper in Cuba, I would surround myself with journalists that I considered good, we would draw a line of work of saying things as they feel, above all that, and that they not limit themselves to doing what we have done on other occasions and for a long time: take two ideas from another and quote and quote again».
The Maestro, who knew very well what “inks” the newsrooms can stain, knew how to criticize the tough: «The journalist —he said— has to express himself, give his opinion of things and in his own way. He must have confidence in journalists and let them write and ask for problems if they ask for them. The problem is who signs the work, not the directors. One of his vices is wanting to do your job, they want you to write as they think you should write. Well, let the directors write!”
For now, it would be good if all media directors —and rank-and-file reporters— got into the habit of re/reading Enrique Núñez Rodríguez, our last great costumbrist. It will be necessary to trace the genetic map of his chronicles to see if one day we clone in our press not just an inimitable colleague, but his will to enter the text from the very skin of the people.
That made him deserve the national prizes for Humor and Radio, the status of National Hero of Labor of the Republic of Cuba, the commission of deputy to the National Assembly and the responsibility of leading talents, as vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC).
With such a load of Revolution in the script, surely his books do not cause any grace to Cuba’s bitter adversaries.
Now that Núñez Rodríguez turns 100, others will speak —and how good it is!— about the grace of his vernacular theater, his equal mastery in radio and television, an endless anecdotary. Here we talk about the colleague, the boy who sold newspapers and early collaborator in them and the man who wrote in ZigZag, Bohemia, posters, Palante, rebel youth, dedete… of the Cuban who one day sold his bicycle to move to Havana, but never sold his pen to leave the country.
Surely, the most widespread memory among readers of Enrique Núñez Rodríguez is, despite being more “fresh”, that of his collaboration with rebel youthbetween 1987 and 2002 —the year he died—, which included chronicles that later became books I sold my bike, my life naked, Hey, how did they catch it?, people that I loved y the downstairs neighbor.
This last title alluded to the “cozy basement” in which for a long time he installed his texts on page three of the youth Sunday, nothing less than in “the bottom” of the well-known and sonorous chronicles of… Gabriel García Márquez!
The Distinguished Son of Quemado de Güines not only burned his ships and stoically endured the waves of those colossal texts from the Colombian Nobel Prize, which furrowed the page next to him, but he also sailed in his own boat with the mastery required to exorcise the quality imbalance to that, in such a neighborhood, the majority of journalists in the Spanish language… or any other would have been doomed. Although it sounds reckless to write it, there were not a few who, on Sunday, preferred him.
Al Gabo, sorry: after all, when the stamps of the creator of Macondo stopped “playing” their whales on the organ of the Cuban youth, many saw Núñez Rodríguez as a well-deserved reward for “rising” —so complicated are promotions in this guild!— to the second floor of the page, but he, in another lesson in humility and humor, declined the offer under the irrefutable argument of his allergy to changes and his “visceral rejection” of swaps.
In case anyone needed greater reasons, Núñez Rodríguez gave the one that even any of those millions of anonymous friends who fed their stories would have used: “Falls from the ground floor are less painful.”
Like most of the author’s, the chronicles of that 2014 book were a success, despite the fact that the author was long dead. Abel Prieto, the foreword writer, would then remember the collateral effects of accompanying the Maestro: «Walking with Enrique —the current president of Casa de las América pointed out— along any street in Havana, Santa Clara, Santiago, any city or town or hamlet of Cuba, became an ordeal. Every three steps he had to stop to receive the greeting, the congratulations, the affection of unknown men and women ».
It is that the genius of Cuban costumbrismo portrayed with equal pulse the great figures and the complete strangers who emulated, in the silent push of the nation, the height of those. Abel Prieto defined it this way: “In any case, Enrique would be more of a hunter of insignificant situations that suddenly turned out to be illuminating, and of anonymous beings.”
Isn’t that, perhaps, an unmistakable mark of major journalism?
With characteristic sharpness, Graziella Pogolotti once explained, with the reasons for the success of Núñez Rodríguez’s chronicles, another of the missions of good journalism: «…they incite laughter and bring to each one of the people who read them a light of hope by reconciling them with their reality”. The Doctor believes that this great intellectual should always be remembered “present and alive.”
Alive and present, then, we can still see him “braiding the rope” —as he defined the task of writing— to deliver a work that, smiling, we will all read. Present and alive he will look at it himself, once published, because he liked to enjoy, on paper, his own making, and then start to draw more characters from his Cuban gallery.
Alive and present, he is among his (most) loved ones who now celebrate, together with the people, 100 Mays of joyful pride. In that print of 2006 published in rebel youth, his son Enriquito would make a revelation that concerns us: what he liked best about the “old man” was when it sounded; that is, when writing and pleased with the text he let out a guttural giggle, behind closed mouth.
“Mjum… hmm… mjum…”, the boy would listen to his father when he knew that he “had broken it” with a new occurrence in front of that typewriter. After that, there were guarantees that millions of Cubans would, at least, smile.
My name is Enrique, but so far… I’ve been writing this tribute for more than three hours and I haven’t earned my own murmur in front of the computer. On the other hand, when I think of that namesake, a pillar of the guild, I perceive him reaping 100 arrobas of ideas per page: immediately, like a son, his sure interjection of success comes to me: “Mjum… hmm… mjum…”. Did they really not listen?
#Nunez #Rodriguez #Mjum.. #jmm.. #mjum