2023-10-16 20:09:21
Times of evocation these days are the eve of the 40th anniversary of the International Institute of Journalism, of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), in which I worked for nine years as deputy director.
I still think I see Guille (Guillermo Cabrera Álvarez), collecting books in the silence of an early morning after the newspaper closes. It was then the year nineteen ninety-four, he was in his office as deputy editor of the newspaper Granmaand that action, unusual about his “organized disorder”, surprised me:
—And that madness! –She managed to tell him.
—Starting tomorrow I will assume the direction of the José Martí International Institute of Journalism, he said with a certain tone of solemnity and commitment.
—But if the entire weight of the Special Period fell on the Institute, I remember that I called it judgmental.
—Well, I’m going to pick it up there, skinny!
All ideas all
To carry out his determination, Guillermo did not need a call. The word spread and as friends, colleagues, companions and acquaintances learned of the appointment, they stopped by the house on G and 21 streets, in Havana’s Vedado, to provide him with ideas and support. Everyone knew that, in one way or another, we were witnessing the sowing of a dream: the new institute.
Frankly, you had to start virtually from scratch. The idea of the “brand new director” was to leave the initial house for teaching activity (previously it also served as a hostel, dining room and kitchen). The other thing was to have a student residence to house the student journalists who would come from the provinces, as well as those from Latin America and the Caribbean. But now that’s easy to say.
And to add “more water to the soup” in that initial stage, Guillermo underwent heart surgery at the Santa Clara cardiocenter, and from there he declared himself in “active recovery,” always under the supervision of his family doctors.
The celebration of the Seventh Congress of the UPEC, in March 1999, was providential in giving a notable boost to the task. And in that sense, Guille’s dialogue with Fidel was decisive. From there arose, among other things, the nickname “Genius” that the Commander in Chief gave to Guillermo.
In tune with all these plans and riding the train locomotive, was Antonio Moltó Martorell, who always said that it was better to work with crazy people than to tie up, and not to work with fools than to push. Moltó held the vice presidency for the professional development of journalists and Fidel jokingly and fairly called him “Minister of Education of the UPEC.”
Let’s do it
Two work directions marked the creative activity: the remodeling of the reference house for teaching and, along the way, the academic program.
Also, and after a thorough “search and capture” search for the most suitable location, the quasi-construction of the student residence began in a building that would be dedicated to the vaults of the film library of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT).
Thus, El Costillar de Rosinante that we know was inaugurated on November 3, 2002, very close to the Institute headquarters. And it is worth highlighting that while the hostel was being built, the scholarship students stayed at the National School of the Ñico López Party.
“El Hueco” was also rescued to convert it into an amphitheater that, since its commissioning, became a cultural space for troubadours, book presentations, debates, promotion of the amateur movement of the neighboring Faculty of Communication, among many others. activities.
The young team of workers that was formed worked with the builders on the construction sites; That initial group became an all-terrain collective and in a short time became a family.
Child, the first deputy director
There are many anecdotes to tell…
Of those initiatives of Guillermo’s own, I remember that when it was planned to roof the back of the house so that it could serve as a dining room for the workers and a picnic area for the students, the first thing he asked the builders was not to cut down the royal palm that was located almost in the center of the place. After the completion of the work, our national tree rose to the sky through a circle around its tall and vigorous stem.
Another of Guillermo’s orientations was to have austere premises for administrative and management work, but with his “he pushed.” In one of the usual visits to check the works, Carlos Lage Dávila, then secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, arrived and asked for Guille’s office and when he entered it, he told him: “But this is a closet!”
At the Institute there was always room for kindness. One day a stray dog came in and the guard on duty came after him with a broom to scare him away. Upon seeing him, Guillermo rebuked him, telling him that he would like to be attacked with brooms.
The embarrassed man lowered his head and apologized, but the one who won was the little animal that soon became the Institute’s mascot. Every day at lunch Guillermo shared his plate of food equally with Niño, because that is how he was baptized, although in honor of the truth, he was also called First Deputy Director, because he even participated in the board of directors meetings.
Innovative teaching
The mission of the Institute, as defined by UPEC and the center’s board of directors, was from now on to contribute to the professional improvement of Cuban and Latin American journalists, through interdisciplinary academic updating programs, exchange of experiences and the debate of the main themes and concerns in the journalistic sector and society.
As a postgraduate improvement center, the idea was to work on the preparation of as many courses as were needed from an agile teaching-educational conception, without waiting for approval processes of the programs extended over time.
The methodological support provided by the advisors of the Ministry of Higher Education and our Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana was decisive in this; likewise, of the Scientific Council that was established in the Institute.
For the formation of such different faculty, there was decisive support from the most prestigious research centers in the country, CITMA agencies, universities, institutions of the central administration of the State, UNESCO and various non-governmental organizations, among them. many other collaborators.
One of the most important successes in this direction was the teaching categorization of prestigious colleagues, who worked as part-time professors in our faculty and chairs. Many of them, driven by this teaching activity, completed master’s degrees and doctorates.
Quickly, the Institute was equipped with specialized classrooms such as computers, languages, photography, and radio studios. It is noteworthy that at the beginning the construction and the delivery of teaching coexisted (not always well managed), but the sacrifice was valid, since the finished classroom immediately had students and teachers using it.
A central theme, present in each annual academic program, since then was the study of José Martí’s journalism, taught by Dr. Nuria Nuiry and Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, National Prize for Social Sciences.
And if we are talking about notable professors (and there were many), with us was Ernesto Vera, founder of the Institute, extraordinary connoisseur of Latin American journalism, Honorary President of the UPEC.
The aforementioned portfolio of courses also includes topics such as the gender approach in communication, current trends in investigative, cultural, sports and heritage journalism, regional integration and public communication policies, and transformations caused in media communication by the use of new technologies.
One of the first actions rescued in this stage under the direction of Guillermo Cabrera Álvarez were the international graduates whose assistance was granted as scholarships for membership of the unions of press workers in Latin America and the Caribbean and for Cuban colleagues selected by their organizations. base.
Furthermore, postgraduate courses have been oriented towards contemporary trends, languages and tools of journalism and multiple specialties of knowledge, as well as the analysis of international contexts and the global battle of ideas.
With the accumulated experience and a little daring at the beginning, the Institute has been specializing in designing customized courses, according to the request requested.
This is how “The Institute with Shoes” was born, a name proposed by Guillermo at first, intended to provide courses in the provinces and abroad, just as was done in Bolivia in the year 2002 and which opened the perspective outside the borders. national. Then those carried out in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua and Colombia were incorporated.
We cannot forget in this account the first major international event organized by the Institute in November 1998, when it was the First World Congress of War Correspondents, an event that showed the convening and organizational capacity of the center in alliance with national and international organizations.
Today, as a result and continuity of this practice, and on the occasion of this 40th anniversary, the Political and Media Confrontation Symposium will be held in Latin America and the Caribbean. Two hundred years after the Monroe Doctrine.
Nor can we miss in this retrospection the brother, deep link with the Faculty of Communication (FCom) of the University of Havana, and especially with its Journalism degree, which provided invaluable help with its (our) professors, the preparation methodological, the possibility of structuring together a laboratory of ideas to improve Cuban journalism that also included its then dean, the Doctor of Sciences and extraordinary journalist Julio García Luis.
It was said then that the only thing that separated us from that fraternity was G Street and we crossed it constantly in both directions every day. We should also thank the journalism students; They invaded our classrooms, when the explosion of enrollment exceeded the capacities on the university campus and impregnated with their enthusiasm and energy every corner where they left their marks.
Guillermo physically left us on July 1, 2007, victim of cardiac arrest, in Guaracabulla, in the center of Cuba. Antonio Moltó Martorell, another colossus followed and strengthened the progress of the Institute.
We owe Guille the refoundation of the José Martí International Institute of Journalism, and with it the line to follow to make his work more than a legacy, a way of seeing and facing with optimism the times we live in and will come.
#Guille #Institute #Cubaperiodistas