2024-02-14 14:23:35
The poet and journalist Tania Díaz Castro died this Sunday in Havana, at the age of 84, according to reports Cuban Newspaper, which does not specify the cause. The independent newspaper CubaNetwhere he had collaborated since 1998, does not offer more details about the circumstances of his death.
Considered a pioneer of independent journalism on the Island, she was born in Camajuaní, Villa Clara, in 1939. Her father, José Felipe Díaz – meaning communist in the era of Gerardo Machado and anti-communist when Fidel Castro came to power – was also a journalist. He worked at the National Library of Cuba and died in exile in New York.
This was not the case of Tania Díaz Castro, who embraced the Revolution, already living in Havana. Founder of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), in 1961, and of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (Upec), in 1963, in those years she began working as a reporter for different official media, as well as publishing her first books. In the seventies, she also worked as a radio scriptwriter.
However, in the late 1980s he began to oppose the regime. She was part, for example, of the group that created the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1987, which would give rise, shortly after, to the Party of the same name.
Shortly afterwards, through blackmail, she was forced to publicly “retract” her work as an independent journalist and to speak ill of her colleagues who were dedicated to that activity.
“Suddenly, as if by fate, in the house number 365 on Lealtad Street the voices of friends began to rise, speaking a different language, without any fear, as if they really had the right to say what they thought, in the middle of a silent, frightened people, vilely deceived by being so naive,” she herself recounted in a chronicle for CubaNet, which continues: “That day, our opinions were expressed in press conferences, written on paper so that the world could hear us, attended by journalists from foreign agencies – France Presse and Reuters – and Cuban. Everyone was amazed by what was happening in La Havana for the first time in more than 30 years.”
His dissidence soon brought him harassment and repression from State Security. Between 1989 and 1990 she was imprisoned for having signed a document that asked Fidel Castro to hold a plebiscite.
Shortly afterwards, through blackmail, she was forced to publicly “retract” her work as an independent journalist and to speak ill of her colleagues who were dedicated to that activity.
In CubaNet You can read their collaborations until 2022.
Last year, in April, the feminist project Casa Palanca organized a fundraiser to “improve the quality of life” of an elderly Tania Díaz Castro, who lived alone, with her pets, in the El Roble neighborhood, in the municipality coast of Santa Fe, Havana.
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