2023-08-04 22:57:45
Before the editorial meetings—on Tuesdays, every 15 days, as if it were a ritual—part of the troop waits for the appointment in the newsroom and in those 15 minutes we laugh, jokingly joke about any of us or the latest technological avatars of the Ñeca (Angelica Arce). Then, before going down to the room where we are trying to “fix the world”, someone asks for “a family photo”.
After seven years in the troops, there are many snapshots that I keep in the gallery of my phone, and from each of them I have a memory and hundreds of laughs.
The troop, like any family, is a bit of its own kind, with different people who fit together. The troop is not perfect and in seven years many have left; others have arrived. Those of us inside know that it works like a perfectly synchronized mechanism and behind it, meshing each piece, is the hand of Randy, who edits at three in the morning as he writes an opinion article at that time.
The troupe, like any family, is a bit unique, with different people who fit in with each other.
The coverage in the National Assembly of People’s Power is until 9 at night, the transcripts of the Round tablelos Minute by minutethe stench of oil on our clothes after getting out of the Lada, the coffee in meetings, or a group on Telegram where a job is coordinated that talks about inflation, have been fundamental ingredients of that glue that unites us.
In the troops, when something happens: cyclones, catastrophes, accidents… nobody needs to be summoned because everyone knows what to do. On the night of September 26, when Ian was approaching the province of Pinar del Río as a category 3 hurricane, the Minute by minute it didn’t stop until the last one of us had a one percent cell phone battery.
The troop, the family, Cubadebate, turns 20 this August 5. Many inquire about statistics, reach, visits, the Alexa Ranking or the positioning in social networks. Sometimes the numbers are scary.
Journalists and directors of Cubadebate during a meeting of their work team
When someone asks what the key is, how we do it, I answer that Cubadebate is its people, its journalists, its support staff, Randy, Oscarito, Edilberto… The key is that, to be a troop, and above all, a family with a desire to eat the world that I have rarely seen, that does not stop in the face of material deficiencies, that reinvents itself, that makes a mistake in a headline, that travels through Havana for an interview, or stands up when defending an argument written in a report.
***
Just one year after the events of the Twin Towers in New York, in 2001, the alleged fight against terrorism by the United States government increased, mainly against Cuba, as it was included in the list of terrorist countries, together with Afghanistan and Iraq.
In this scenario, it was essential to create a means of expression for committed Cuban journalists and other nationalities, with space for exchanges on terrorism and defamation campaigns organized against Cuba.
In March of that year, the US had launched the war against Iraq, and 75 people who collaborated with the Interests Office in Havana were arrested in Cuba. In Miami, the only demonstration in favor of that country’s intervention in Iraq had just taken place, and in the images released, signs appeared saying “Iraq now, Cuba later”.
Bush had declared his idea to “attack sixty and more dark corners of the planet and among those dark corners of the planet was Cuba.” In this scenario, an intense campaign was carried out against the largest of the Antilles from the main media in the US and in Europe and a whole campaign was amplified that positioned Cuba as a repressive state that had to be stopped.
Faced with this situation, the Circle of Journalists Against Terrorism was created in Cuba, because, moreover, at that time there was a campaign to denounce the presence of Posada Carriles, first in Central America and later in the United States.
The first action of this Circle was to create a site that would be an expression of that battle for the truths of the world and of Cuba, and convert it, as Randy Alonso Falcón has said in some interviews, into “a space for the defense of the truth of the Revolution, of combat against media terrorism, denouncing State terrorism against Cuba, defending progressive causes, battles for world justice, to prevent lies from being baptized as a deadly weapon against Cuba”.
On August 5, 2003, Cubadebate emerged, at the International Press Center in the City of Havana, with the presence of the then president of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcón. This initiative was led by a group of Cuban journalists led by Randy Alonso Falcón and Rosa Miriam Elizalde.
A name was sought that would exactly promote the intentions of the site: a debate from Cuba that would confront the campaigns of foreign media. Also, because it was a name that served both in Spanish and English, to be able to reach the North American public, decisive in that fight. Hence his slogan Against Media Terrorism.
This group of journalists, previously from the Cubasí portal, had developed and launched online the site www.antiterroristas.cu, in September 2002, together with a group of students from the Marta Abreu de Las Villas University who had created the Quipus platform. News for website management.
Little by little, the journalists from the beginning were reduced to just two people: Randy Alonso and Rosa Miriam Elizalde, who had started working together at the Information Office of the Council of State, and carried the editorial weight, but without much rigor. The site was updated intermittently, initially it did not generate its own content and then it began to be totally collaborative in which there was no fixed template.
However, in 2008, when Fidel Castro began to publish his Reflections exclusively in Cubadebate, the editors brought together the old editorial board and began a discussion process for the creation of a new technical tool, with better features and a new interface. .
Ricardo Ronquillo Bello, president of UPEC and Randy Alonso, director of Cubadebate, during the awards ceremony of the National Press Festival in 2021
In June 2009, Cubadebate moved from Quipus News to the WordPress platform for blogs, under its own .cu domain, where it remains today.
***
After 20 years, after a process of editorial transformation, Cubadebate belongs to Multimedia Ideasand the challenges and dreams of that group of journalists who created the medium have multiplied, along with the statistics and the demand of the readers.
Those of us who are there, those of us who write, those of us who do editorial guard duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are aware of the commitment and of how difficult it is to make it different. In this effort we try to follow Randy’s footsteps, grow, make mistakes and learn, being faithful to who we are, and accumulating more “family photos” in the galleries of our phones.
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