Rolando Pérez Betancourt was absolutely right in the world when he described the Time.news as an elusive genre, Jíbaro called it, in which some succeed and others fail. José Antonio Fulgueiras ranks among the first, a winner without a doubt. In the Time.news is one of the strengths of the writing exercise of those who are partying these days for sharing, together with Roberto Ferguson, Marina Menéndez, Juvenal Balán and Héctor Ochoa, the José Martí National Prize for Journalism for the work of life .
From everyone I could capture assessments and experiences, but I decided to focus on Fulgue and a few will know why. We both did chores and had adventures in Villa Clara, in the Vanguardia newsroom in the 1980s, when the province’s newspaper came out six times a week and we had to respond to the demands of an intense social, economic, and cultural life. We were united by the call of Pedro Hernández Soto, director of the newspaper, an engineering graduate from the Marta Abreu Central University, in Las Villas, endowed like few others with a special sensitivity to understand journalism as a political tool and public service.
Pedro trusted his journalists but he had to comply. On the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the campaign to liberate the plazas in the north of the province by the invading column led by Camilo Cienfuegos, we were commissioned to produce full-page reports on the capture of Caibarién and Remedios, the first by Fulgue and the other on my own. They were urgent jobs, because they had to be ready, as they say in these cases, for yesterday. Fulgue did not limit himself to delving into the intricacies of the epic; In his inquiry, he gave voice and presence to the impacts of the feat on the daily life of the people of Caibaren and their expectations.
On the way back to Santa Clara we stopped in Camajuaní, where we met that excellent host, poet and folklorist named René Batista Moreno, a disciple of Samuel Feijóo. With René, whom we nicknamed La Pantera, time flew by, between poems, rums and the ineffable airs of his partying fable. It got dark and we learned that Pedro had put a price on our heads for not reporting at the agreed time.
We arrived at Bengochea’s apartment, near the left field of the Sandino stadium, where he lived together with Roberto González Quesada, also distinguished with the José Martí National Journalism Award. The Patriarch alerted us again: “If they don’t deliver the reports, they are fried.” Hard work at dawn in front of the typewriter. No computers. I went for the classic count; Shine for your prodigious imagination rooted in reality. From the house to the newspaper; under the door of the address, we leave the originals and the photographic indications. Pedro declared smiling and satisfied later: “You make a dangerous tandem.”
Fulgue liked to pepper his chronicles, especially sports ones. In those days the owner of the page was Miguel Pérez Cuéllar, Miki, a gentleman who woke up in the newspaper and returned to La Esperanza at 6:00 pm at the latest. The voluntary baseball nights, extraplan of the agenda of attention to the social sector, were the best training for Fulgue. Also boxing nights. Once the chronicler came up with an explosive headline: “Cárdenas is murdered in the doorway of his house.” He was referring to the boxer from Villa Clara Rafael Cárdenas, who apparently received an unfair adverse result. Fulgue faced a double problem; on the one hand, the boxer’s last name coincided with that of the first secretary of the Party in the province; on the other, the arbitrators, in union composition, appeared in the newsroom to demand reparation. Fulgue managed to get out of a trance that, over time, remained as a very unique anecdote in the sports press and in the history of Vanguardia.
He knew – we commented on it more than once – that journalism, if it was assumed as a creative practice, not at all complacent, was similar to the perils of a tightrope walker. Being daring implied risks; being conservative was not in his mood. But you had to be responsible, very responsible, without missing the truth or ethics. Intuit when passion should be bridled, without detriment to bold turns, humorous flashes and deep looks.
In this way, by way of example, when describing the imprint of Chinese migration in the forging of our identity -with regard to the profile of General Armando Choy, collected in the book Search for Che-, opens the Time.news with this image: “Cuba stretched its eyes more than 150 years ago when on June 3, 1847, after a hazardous voyage, the first Chinese kissed its shores…” Or this other alumbrón that came from his soul and the experience when dismissing baseball player Pedro José Rodríguez from active play: “… there are and will be many home run hitters in this country, but capable of putting metrics on a hit and taking images and metaphors from it, there will only be one: Cheíto Rodríguez”.
It is that the Fulgue is a journalist and popular poet, with the clear saint and the skill in the words. Dominating the jíbaro genre is up to him.