Inside Cuba’s Party Newspaper

HAVANA TIMES — For decades Cuba’s official Communist Party daily Granma has strived to present the island as a country of monumental David versus Goliath efforts, near utopian wellbeing and willing to share its progress with other nations.

At the same time it has painted the rest of the world as being mired in inequalities and poverty, especially its arch rival the USA, presented as a virtual hell on earth, with a never-ending desire to control Cuba.

Granma specializes in a black and white picture of the planet, of good and evil where the governments of Cuba’s allies can do no wrong and its enemies no right.

One of the journalists in charge of presenting the rest of the world to Cubans over recent years was Aida Calviac Mora a 29-year-old woman who left Granma in 2012, where she headed its international section. She came to Granma in 2007 after graduating from university, notes Café Fuerte.

Aida is now in Miami, and telling her account of the Cuban media and the frustrations faced by young journalists wanting to do a more professional job.  She appeared on the TV program El Espejo and voiced the frustration of being part of a type of journalism she said is detached from the realities and information needs of the Cuban population.

Calviac said that the country’s leaders and those in charge of the media continue to be trapped in a “siege mentality” which goes against any attempt at professional journalism.

The following is part one of an interview (in Spanish) on the Miami TV program El Espejo with Calviac and her husband Abel González Veranes, who had been a reporter for Radio Rebelde, the leading Cuban radio station.