An outrage, of course lacking any legal and constitutional basis, took place in Havana in 1950. On August 24 at 5:30 in the morning, forces of the National Police, commanded by Commander Rafael Casal, head of the Radiomotorized section, occupied the editorial office and workshops of the newspaper Hoy, organ of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) located at 108 Desagüe Street between Oquendo and Marqués González.
With them was the person who would assume the intervention of the newspaper, and also Tony Varona, senator for Camagüey and at that time prime minister of the Government of Carlos Prío, who, above the opinion of the President, who considered the act a transgression of the law , served as the spearhead of the assault, eviction and occupation of the workers’ newspaper.
The yellow worker leadership, which years before, with police support, had expelled its legitimate leaders from the CTC, put pressure on the president and raised the bar when he explicitly warned him, in all his letters, that people like Blas Roca and Lázaro Peña had no right to live.
“We have no other way,” the Premier said to Luis Botifoll, director of the newspaper El Mundo, visiting the Palace, who expressed his opposition to the intervention. The helmsman of the Águila y Virtudes newspaper described it as a dangerous weapon for opinion bodies, which would be exposed to such a procedure when the precedent was invoked. He did not advise, however, to remain with one’s hands crossed. He could take Hoy to court for conspiring against the stability of the Republic or push through Congress, with a government majority, a law that would prohibit the actions of the communists.
There was no shortage of ministers who expressed their disagreement. Ramón Vasconcelos, minister without portfolio and director of the newspaper Alerta – the so-called Golden Pen of Cuban journalism – said he saw the event as a “threat of tyranny”, and attacked it in an editorial that he titled “Disastrous Precedent”, and gave find out in your newspaper.
The strongest obstacle was that of José Morel Romero, head of Labor. He argued that the decree that would justify the intervention, if promulgated, would be invalidated by the Court of Constitutional and Social Guarantees. He did not hide his discomfort at not having been consulted. There was something more serious. The Constitution provided that the minister sign the decrees that emanated from his portfolio to submit them to the President’s signature. In this case, Morel’s signature was essential.
Faced with his reluctance, “Tony” Varona found a Solomonic solution. He forced Morel to take sick leave, asked the President to appoint him to replace the supposedly sick man, and signed as head of Labor by regulatory substitution.
A colossal campaign
Starting in August 1940, a colossal fundraising campaign was called in Cuba to provide its own workshops for the newspaper Hoy, the organ of the Cuban communists. Nicolás Guillén writes in his memoirs that the success of the new slogan was immense: “Workshops for Today!”
The newspaper—its real name was Noticias de Hoy—began to appear on May 16, 1938, although on the first of that month it had launched an extraordinary edition of 10,000 copies.
Initially, it was printed in its first three months in the workshops of the newspaper Información, in Barcelona and Amistad. It then went to those of Obrapía 359, between Compostela and Havana, later occupied by Prensa Libre and Zigzag, and then to those of Lucilo de la Peña, in Compostela and Luz, where in 1940 Frente, the so-called best newspaper in the world, would be launched. , who died the day after his birth when Batista, now president, denied him the promised money. From there he returned to Obrapía Street.
In all those workshops the concern was the same: getting the money for the paper and for the payment of the printing workers, who was always ahead, was a cause of anguish day in and day out.
The writer Félix Pita Rodríguez, who was in charge of the newspaper’s magazine, Nicolás Guillén with his chronicles, and the Haitian poet and novelist Jacques Roumain worked or collaborated in Hoy. The head of information was the now forgotten Vicente Martínez, who would make the pseudonym of Esmeril famous, with which he signed his column En la punto de el, which became very read. He knew what journalism was from start to finish, from shouting about it in the street to laying out its pages and filling them with interesting texts in the feverish hustle and bustle of the newsroom. At six or seven years old and living in a hut on Perseverancia Street, he had sold newspapers to help support the family, and from then on he became the formidable journalist that he became.
In nine months the money was raised for the printing press that a “fellow traveler” acquired in New York; very good, almost new and at a good price. But where to install it?
While the purchased iron was at the mercy of the sea salt in the Havana docks, the collection was stretched a little further to acquire an appropriate location.
The one on Desagüe Street finally appeared. But that was a disaster. It was leaking and the roof and walls were threatening to collapse. The necessary repairs were made and the building was expanded, and the operators learned to master the new machines. Today, lying in its new workshops, it began to appear on May 29, 1941.
Sports America
At six in the morning the phone rang at the house of parliamentarian Aníbal Escalante, on Libertad Street, in La Víbora, to inform him of the occupation of the building, surrounded at that hour by more than ten pursuers. Immediately, the director of Hoy also went out to Calzada de Diez de Octubre and boarded a tram that, with exasperating slowness, left him at Infanta, corner of Desagüe, to continue on foot to the newspaper. At Oquendo, First Lieutenant Rafael Salas Cañizares blocked his way, but the head of the Investigations Bureau gave him access and accompanied him to what was his office. Already there he argued strongly with Premier Varona, from whom he asked for the judicial document that supported the search of the premises. There wasn’t. Varona then wanted to formalize the delivery document. It was drawn up, but Escalante, calm and phlegmatic, refused to sign it. He also did not sign the inventory record, and asked that his declaration of non-compliance be included in the documents.
At this point, Varona was visibly upset and ended the meeting, while the parliamentarian collected some of his belongings, including an autograph of Major General Calixto García, whose father was an assistant and biographer, and portraits of his children.
Today he was on the street again the same day, at 9:30 at night. It was the same newspaper, but with the name América Deportiva, printed in a workshop in Lamparilla y Mercaderes. PSP militants, men and women, distributed it, and in the process called for popular resistance against the occupation and closure of Hoy, which, denounced the orthodox politician Millo Ochoa, and which constituted an unequivocal violation of article 33 of the 1940 Constitution , which conditioned any official intervention of newspapers to “prior substantiated resolution of a competent judicial authority.”
América Deportiva aroused the concern of the captain of the First Police Station, who did not take long to communicate it to Lieutenant Colonel Rego Rubido, head of the Police Department. It was a legally registered newspaper and, apparently, there was nothing to do, but he decided to put a guard on it, with the pretext of avoiding an attack by the anti-communist element.
Everything changed 24 hours later. América Deportiva achieved another run when Varona ordered the Minister of the Interior to close it. On Saturday the 26th, without any consideration, the Police showed up at the Lamparilla workshop, and the captain of the Primera told Escalante that he would not allow himself to take a single copy from the printing press. “It’s a question of strength,” he stressed. Although the Sunday edition of the heir to Hoy managed to be printed, the Police thwarted its circulation. And on Monday, early in the morning, the voice of the Cuban communists was definitively closed, who would once again take the path of clandestine propaganda.
