Why Did Granma Fire its Director?

Rosa Martinez

HAVANA TIMES — According to the announcement published by Granma newspaper, the Cuban Communist Party’s official press, Pelayo Terry Cuervo, the director of this newspaper, the country’s main one, was “released” from his position because of mistakes he had made.

On this occasion, I’m not going to talk about the indifference of Cuba’s official media, yet again, because that would be to make firewood out of a fallen tree, or worse yet, repeating the same thing so I’m only going to comment on the newspaper’s own blunders.

Granma made a serious mistake, and it wasn’t getting rid of Pelayo.

As I don’t know what the real reasons that led to the firing (although I have heard some speculations), I can’t say whether it was a fair decision to remove him from his position or not.

Plus, if it were an injustice, who am I to judge? At the end of the day, this is the Party’s paper and it’s up to them who they want or don’t want at the front of its different bodies. Although to tell you the truth, Fidel had said on more than one occasion that the Party was the people, but not everyone believes that and Fidel has been dead for a year already.

So getting back to my point: Granma made two mistakes: first in publishing the announcement, if it wasn’t going to give the reasons that led to this removal public, what was the point in saying anything if the Cuban people are more than used to finding out the hottest and most important news in the country through alternative media. Anyway, sooner or later, the real reason will come out in one way or another.

The other mistake with the announcement was calling what we all know as being fired as being “released”. According to what I understand, it’s Party’s policy to talk about “releasing” people from their position when a person has been working in the position for a long time, because of illness or because they are being promoted.

However, when there’s been a serious mistake, as it appears to be in Mr. Pelayo’s case, there’s no other word for it than being “kicked” out, or in a nicer way, “discharged”…