What is the difference between the Anglo press and the Hispanic American one?
The Anglo press does not call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. We do.
You run a newspaper in Spanish.
The oldest in Florida in Spanish, with 70 years, second in the United States.
Who reads your newspaper?
Spanish speakers from Florida, especially Cubans in Miami.
How many?
Two million Cubans live in the United States, born in Cuba. They multiply if we start computing children, grandchildren…
How do those exiles feel?
Nostalgic for a Cuba that does not exist. The one outside the island is just as Cuban as the one inside. And with a common desire.
Which?
Rebuild Cuba. Falls apart. And all Cubans keeping their language.
The Spanish language as home?
English on the street and at work, but Spanish at home. Spanish will survive.
Is the number of Spanish speakers growing or decreasing?
It grows! The Spanish language grows and progresses in Miami and the Cuban culture survives: 60% of families living in South Florida maintain their familiar Spanish.
What do these families live on?
From the service sector, above all.
And what do they vote?
His vote is migrating in recent years to the Republican party.
To what do you attribute this?
Politicians force polarized ideological trenches that force you to choose one option and that divides society.
As for Cuba, Obama softened relations between the two governments.
Did that improve the lives of Cubans or just the comfort of the regime’s leadership?
What would you advise?
That the US government dialogue with all Cubans, outside and inside.
Is there a lock?
There are internet platforms with which Cubans from abroad buy everything for their relatives from within… and the Cuban regime controls and keeps part of the money.
What way out do you see for Cuba?
Cuban society is imploding. But the weapons are held by the military.
What way out do you see for that society?
That military commanders decide to protect the people on the street instead of repressing them, closing the dome of terror.
What do your readers think?
Thanks for all points of view. They are in their twenties on social media, forties and older on paper. We are a multiplatform medium: updated news on networks and channels with documentaries such as Operación Pedro Pan.
Peter Bread?
Peter Pan, but using Spanish. After the revolution, a generation of Cuban children moved to Miami. What happened to them? Sixty years later, we recount their lives.
Summarize them in one.
They all achieved success. Like Rick Prado, now a senior CIA general, now retired: he participated in the capture of Bin Laden. An American hero.
And what is the history of your family?
The obsession of my mother, from the countryside, was to give me culture. My father, a typographer, had been a Batista policeman…
Did the revolution respect you?
The residents of the neighborhood defended him, for his good deeds. As a child I accompanied him to newspaper printers.
Is your journalistic vocation born there?
At the age of ten, I already wanted to be a journalist.
What image do you have of Cuba as a child?
I remember avenues shaded by pine trees.
Didn’t want to leave the island?
No… until my father emigrated, separating from my mother. He worked hard in Miami. The wall fell, Cuba’s economy collapsed, and my father returned in the 1990s. “I don’t want my grandchildren to grow up here,” he told us. And he helped me leave Cuba for Miami with my eight-year-old daughter.
How did you feel when you arrived in the United States? You were 37 years old…
Uprooted and sad, I felt terribly misplaced and miserable.
It’s not like that?
Twenty years have passed… It took me two long years to find my place.
What helped you find it?
Start working as a reporter in this newspaper. And also my daughter.
Your eight year old daughter?
I wanted to be a mirror of struggle and strength for my daughter, not of victimhood and defeat. Today my daughter is 28 years old and she is a fighter.
What dreams do you have today?
Make responsible journalism, without sensationalism, and publish the work of persecuted and brave journalists from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua…
