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The commander of Prensa Latina

On the anniversary of the founding of Prensa Latina, prologue Rodolfo Walsh wrote in 1969 the book “Those who fight and those who weep.” The book Those who fight and those who mourn is testimony to the Argentine journalist Jorge Masetti, his foray into the Sierra Maestra, in pursuit of interviewing the leaders of the M-26-7. May his name continue almost as unknown in his country as a piece of jungle that hides his bones could foresee Jorge Masetti. Journalist, knew how to build reputations and weave forgetfulness. Guerrilla, could presume that if he defeated the enemy would be the temporary owner of their history. Masetti, of course, was a rebel integral. The guerrillas of Salta, their presence in Algeria and in the Bay of Pigs, Prensa Latina, this book, are links in a chain of remarkable consistency. Between 1958 and 1964 he lived for the Latin American revolution whose seed was in Cuba and the Revolution he lived stormy … There was no doubt a process whose genesis attest these pages. Masetti was a radio reporter in 1958 when World decided to see what was happening in Cuba. His contacts were weak, their limited means, its purpose-Fidel in the Sierra-exaggerated. The extent of the danger lies, without emphasis, in his own story: of the two foreign journalists Masetti found in the Sierra, one was murdered, down by Batista’s police, the other was tortured and “sang”. Expected mortality, hiding and marches impossible on foot and mule, trust, a toss play in every moment, he approached the great protagonists of their history. On the road was becoming the Cuban people, their peasants shot down, destroyed their villages with napalm.Masetti, who confessed not having never thrown a shot, he was suddenly under fire from machine guns 50 with a plane on the plateau sprinkled all that showed signs of life: he and his guide. A peasant woman handed him a revolver 22 is not to defend, but to commit suicide if they ran into the guards. He changed his dark clothes with an air of Buenos Aires by the guayabera compadrito the peasant, by the rebel army uniform. But in this witty journalist illusionism had a dark ritual, a genuine transformation. He had been plagued by doubts, caveats, subtleties and swallow him unsurpassed collective experience of a people in revolution. The reports of Fidel and Che, Masetti transmitted on Radio Rebelde, were important in the island itself: it was the first time that the Cuban people listened to their leaders.At that time the revolution, agrarian, popular, anti-imperialist, not yet publicly defined by socialism. That would come later. Dominica “Much of what we were doing or what we dreamed of,” declared Guevara.