What differentiates the English press from the Hispanic press in the United States?
The English press does not describe Nicolás Maduro as a dictator. We do.
You run a newspaper in Spanish.
Florida’s longest-serving Spanish speaker, with 70 years, second in the United States.
Who reads your newspaper?
Florida Spanish speakers, especially Cubans in Miami.
how many are
Two million Cubans live in the United States, born in Cuba. They multiply if we start counting children, net…
How do those expelled feel?
Nostalgic for a Cuba that doesn’t exist. The outside of the island is as Cuban as the inside. And with a common longing.
Who?
Rebuild Cuba It falls to pieces. And all Cubans preserving their language.
The Spanish language as home?
English on the street and at work, but Spanish in their homes. Spanish will survive.
Is the number of Spanish speakers increasing or decreasing?
Grows up! The Spanish language is growing and progressing in Miami and Cuban culture lives on: 60% of families living in South Florida keep their familiar Spanish.
What do those families live on?
From the service sector, especially.
And what do they vote for?
His vote is turning these last years towards the republican party.
What do you attribute it to?
Politicians force polarized ideological trenches that force you to choose an option and this divides society.
As for Cuba, Obama eased relations between the two governments.
Did it improve the lives of Cubans or just the comfort of the top of the regime?
What would you advise?
That the Government of the United States dialogue with all Cubans, outside and inside.
Is there a blockage?
There are internet platforms with which Cubans outside buy everything for their relatives inside… and the Cuban regime controls it and keeps part of the money.
What exit does he see in Cuba?
Cuban society is experiencing an implosion. But the military have the weapons.
What exit does he see for that society?
That military commanders decide to protect the people in the street instead of repressing them, and close the dome of terror.
What do your readers think?
They welcome all points of view. They are young people in their twenties on social networks, in their forties and older on paper. We are a multi-platform medium: updated news on networks and channels with documentaries such as Operación Pedro Pan.
Pedro Bread?
Peter Pan, but using Spanish. After the revolution, a generation of Cuban children goes to Miami. What happened to them? Sixty years later, we relate it.
Sum them up in one.
They all conquered success. Like Rick Prado, now a high-ranking general of the CIA, already retired: he participated in the capture of Bin Laden. An American hero.
And what is your family history?
My mother’s obsession, in the countryside, was to give me culture. My father, a typographer, had been Batista’s policeman…
Did the revolution respect him?
The residents of the neighborhood defended him, for his good deeds. As a child I accompanied him to the newspaper printing office.
Was his journalistic vocation born there?
At the age of ten, he already wanted to be a journalist.
What image do you have of Cuba as a child?
I remember pine-shaded avenues.
Didn’t want to leave the island?
No… until my father emigrated, when he separated from my mother. He worked hard in Miami. The wall fell, Cuba’s economy collapsed and it returned to the 90s. “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.
What did you feel when you arrived in the United States? You were 37 years old…
Uprooted and sad, I felt terribly out of place and miserable.
Isn’t that the case anymore?
It’s been twenty years… It took me two long years to find my place.
What helped her find it?
Start working as a reporter in this newspaper. And also my daughter.
His eight-year-old daughter?
I wanted to be for my daughter a mirror of struggle and strength, not of victimhood and defeat. Today she is 28 years old and a fighter.
What dreams do you have today?
Do responsible journalism, without sensationalism, and publish the work of persecuted and courageous journalists from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua…
