2023-07-14 15:04:11
A legend of Latin American journalism turns 90 and the fact calls for reflection on the value of firmness of ideals, commitment to just causes, integrity in times of corruption, to leave brilliant and indelible traces in the collective memory of his time, and beyond.
Because Manuel Cabieses Donoso has been and is one of the rebels with a cause (read his autobiography, published by Ocean Sur, and you will see it), beyond being born in his beloved Chile, full of events in contemporary history (since the dreamy epic from Salvador Allende to the fascist barbarism led by Augusto Pinochet). He has been and is, one of those who rises above the daily and local events to look to the horizon, and a little beyond, of the most pressing, glorious and terrible realities of his time.
It is not strange to feel small in front of his voluminous presence, although his kindness in dealing with him makes him fraternal from the first moment, if you share his transcendent visions. At least that’s what happened to me when I met him (and he even received me at his house) more than 20 years ago, when we were forging Chilean participation in a Latin American and Caribbean meeting of journalists in Havana.
Since 1965, when founding that paradigm of left-wing journalism that he called Punto Final, he began to stand out in his frontal combat against anti-popular currents, even those disguised as democracy. That fortnightly “paper and ink” magazine, as he himself has called it, “between 1965 and 2018 fought a fierce battle against the dictatorship of single thought”, as he has defined it.
The synthesis of his work is recounted by Cabieses himself in a 2021 note on the printed stage of the publication: ”The history of PF is linked to the anti-imperialist struggles and for the socialism of the peoples of Latin America and, in particular, of the people Chilean. Its pages, product of the talent and solidarity of dozens of collaborators, constitute a record -sometimes passionate and controversial- of a historical period of our continent, plagued by popular combats. Those struggles with mistakes, victories and defeats, forged the stage of social changes that Latin America is beginning to experience”.
In the prologue he made to his autobiography of a rebel, Juan Jorge Faundes M. wrote: “When it was necessary to do mass work as a trade unionist and union leader, Manuel Cabieses did it, even when he was a prisoner. When it was necessary to transmute the political struggle into headlines, editorials and journalistic chronicles, Manuel Cabieses did it. And also when it was necessary to take up arms against tyranny”.
It means, as if in passing, that “Almost a decade of clandestine life with a gun at his belt. The praxis of journalism and the revolution converged in his life, in his courage and in his pen.
He says and I underline it: “The fulfillment of his vocation as a revolutionary journalist —in that same order— would not have been possible without the help of a family that was and is with him at all times, through thick and thin. From his story, the figure of a real woman emerges, but who seems like a novel heroine, Flora, his wife, with whom he has been side by side since his union struggles as a teenager, even in the military fight against the dictatorship and the renaissance of
Full stop…” I met her and her daughter, Paca, also an excellent journalist, briefly on that trip in 2001, but I already knew her human stature.
Cuba in Cabieses
In this model man of “rebellion who refuses to die”, his unrestricted support for Cuba and its Revolution also stands out.
From my beloved Luis Báez, Cubadebate published an interview in 2013 that begins, not for fun: “Sixteen months and three days, exactly 11,808 hours, Manuel Cabieses Donoso, director of Punto Final magazine, remained in different concentration camps in Chile. . During his captivity, the political leadership of the MIR agreed to elevate him to its Central Committee for the courageous and unitary attitude he maintained. Cabieses, a simple and honest man, has always been a sincere and loyal friend of the Cuban Revolution and a fervent admirer of Fidel and Che.”
A sample of this can be found in one of his many articles on the Cuban Revolution, which described it as “the most important event of the 20th century in Latin America, and that is how it will be valued by history.”
In that sample button of his assessment in this regard, carried out in 2009, he wrote: “Cuba took charge -with all the dangers and costs that this implied- of the continuity of the independence struggle in our America. In the 1960s, she gallantly embodied the most authentic of the rebellious, daring and courageous genius of the heroes of independence. And in the following years, until today, it became a symbol of an amazing resistance to all kinds of imperialist aggressions”.
His assessment of the contributions of the Cuban process in the field of ideas is important, about which he wrote: “it refreshed the theory and blew up the revolutionary manuals and dogmas. Inspired by Marxism-Leninism but incorporating into its ideology the heritage of the liberators of the 19th century, the fraternal values of Christianity and the community cultures of indigenous and mestizo America, the Cuban Revolution endowed the Latin American revolutionary movement with a system of ideas. ”.
In his historical considerations, which are often ignored by many of the alleged contemporary progressives, he meant that “The Revolution also fought against the bourgeois reformist governments that followed the guidelines of the Alliance for Progress promoted by the United States, with the reformist parties Left and even with the powerful Communist Party of the Soviet Union, its main and almost only ally. The highest point of this ideological controversy -in whose heat a new revolutionary generation in Latin America was formed-, was constituted by the First Conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS) that took place in Havana in August 1967. The resolution General of the OLAS, today almost forgotten by some and others, has as its title a thought by Simón Bolívar: “For us the Homeland is America”, an affirmation that has recovered freshness and force promoted by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela…”.
To put together this document-tribute to this essential of Latin American revolutionary journalism, I have reread many of his numerous texts, in which this veteran of the trenches of ideas shows that they are worth more than those made of stone when it comes to summoning, convincing and mobilizing the best of the human being to fight for a better world for all.
In them I found the deep thinker, with an attractive word, for being clear and simple, which without fear or cellophanes tells whoever wants to read it what they need to know about events and their behind-the-scenes.
In the aforementioned Autobiography Alejo Carpentier is mentioned when he said that journalists should be chroniclers of their time. To this fundamental idea was added that “The media also narrate events, interpret realities and tell a time. If, in addition, that media outlet is committed to just causes, it is
on the side of the poor and reflects a commitment to ethics, will transcend time not only as a chronicler of an era but also as a rostrum for shouting
of resistance, emancipation and rebellion”.
Holder of two Cuban decorations: One from the Council of State (Amistad) and another from UPEC (Félix Elmuza), Manuel reaches 90, with a life that he collected in his fascinating story about her (highly recommended and whose download is accessible by Internet).
From her he will learn that, at a very young age, he wanted to be a missionary in Africa, his union work and journalism, his trips as a correspondent, his workplaces, including outside of Chile, his closeness to Salvador Allende, the controversies with the left , his friendship with Hugo Chávez, his relations with Gabriel García Márquez, his love for Cuba and its Revolution and many other key passages in his rich personal and professional history.
Given my interest in updating his life, on the eve of the 1990s, I resumed the contact that new technologies allow and I reproduce large fragments of his response to the information that, to my honor, he wrote about him:
“The honor is for me: that UPEC remembers me and that you write the note, old comrade in the battle of ideas.
“Me, on the verge of 90, a widower for 5 years (of Flora Martínez, a nurse (whom he makes a partner in his professional and political endeavors); 2 daughters and 1 son, 6 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren).
“Retired but I keep a blog: www.puntofinalblog.cl which includes the autobiographical book and is the extension of PF. A slow agony without losing hope. From time to time I write an article about internal politics”.
And when I asked him for his assessment of current events, he said: “The world has become more difficult for revolutionary ideas and action. But it is not only necessary to persist in them (“the world cannot be a mess” also in this century): We need a profound renovation of ideas, of the way of expressing them and of the way of applying them to reality.
“We are very much subject to ideas and prejudices (which take on the character of “principles”) from the days of the railway and the telegraph). In Latin America, experiences have emerged (may God protect them!) in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia… But the great predator is still there, lurking. As long as we don’t get rid of the empire, nothing is safe for the peoples.
“China’s spectacular growth is a hope that rivalry will keep waning imperialism on the defensive and making concessions. We’ll see, it’s still early.”
Despite what has been written, including his words, I end up with the feeling of an unfinished work, truthful but with facts and nuances that escape due to the haste and, above all, due to the gigantic size of the effort to honor that hero of Latin American journalism, committed and revolutionary, known as Manuel Cabieses Donoso, for whom I invite you to toast this July 14.
#hero #committed #journalism