By Arleen Rodríguez Derivet on August 6, 2023
the current Cubadebate collaborators,
photo: Adrian Juan Espinosa,
In August 2003, most of us didn’t even have a cell phone of our own. And although the world was talking about that year as a year of transition for the Internet due to broadband and other advances, in Cuba the network of networks was something very incipient, a matter of experts, as it is often said when you feel that progress does not touch you.
Randy Alonso and Rosa Miriam Elizalde, moved in another direction. For them, the Internet was what we could not miss, the crucial issue, the leap we take or they give it to us.
We, the rest of us, were a group of journalists from all the media that existed by then in Cuba – written press, radio and television – most of us specialized in international politics, all of us worried about the war plans of W. Bush and his hawks, who with lies and bombs had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, after warning that 60 or more “dark corners of the world” could be punished by the new American emperor, who, according to himself, spoke to God and acted in his name.
The nightly Round Table was about to celebrate its fourth year leading the ranking of political journalism in the country, under the guidance of Fidel, enthusiastic founder and main promoter of the topics covered by the program. At that time the priorities were very clear: the freedom of the Cuban Five heroes imprisoned by the empire and the false war against terrorism with which the United States was engulfing worlds. In the analysis of both issues, all the members of the group that one day, ( I do not remember) in 2003 joined together to create the Circle of journalists against media terrorism of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and right there -UJC House of 15 and 16, headquarters of the Roundtable- gave birth to Cubadebate.
As a sign of distinction of the circle with respect to others of the UPEC, the diversity of nationalities of its members attracted the attention of the group. I especially remember three greats, now deceased: Jean Guy Allard, from Granma International, a Canadian who had specialized in investigative journalism on mafias, Marie Dominique Bertuccioli, journalist and French translator for Radio Habana Cuba and Bernie Dwyer, Irish producer for the same station, all three outstanding fighters for the freedom of the Five, a cause for which they mobilized savings and solidarity, besides giving their energy, their time and their undisputed talent.
I believe that it was from these three that the proposal to join the names of Cuba and debate, which were considered the key words for the medium we intended to create, came from: in all languages the title could be understood.
And here I arrive to the reason of this account so full of endearing beings. Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Randy Alonso proposed to create, together with the Circle, a web page, a means to dismantle lies, a site to disseminate denunciations. To raise truths against disinformation.
With my analogical mentality I remember that I was against it: a web page for whom, in a country with Internet limited to Education and Science? Let’s do what we want in the media we work for and when the Internet really reaches everyone, we will see what to do.
Luckily I was not heard, but neither was I separated from the project. And when our web page was launched on August 5, 2003, among the most relevant works, there was a proposal that I felt honored to make: the revelations of an investigation by Major General (R) Fabian Escalante on the relationship of Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists of Cuban origin with the Kennedy assassination.
I was also not initially convinced by the editorial decision to publish as many comments as possible: tens, hundreds, even thousands of comments, for what? Who is going to read them?
Surely not all, but many do read them. And Cubadebate acquires with that breadth of opinions one of its greatest values as a means of communication. To such an extent that 20 years later I feel that I haven’t read a work if I don’t read what the Internet users comment on it. As if without the opinion of the readers, none of them is complete.
With the days, months and years, Cubadebate became what Rosa and Randy predicted from the beginning: a medium of the future that was already present that day, although some of us could not see it.
I needed to say it. In homage to my colleagues who saw before me and farther.
Source: Cubadebate translation Resumen Laitinoamericano – English