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From
Our Mailbag
BY MARELYS VALENCIA-Granma International staff
writer-
• HOW DID THE NEWSPAPER
GRANMA COME TO BE?
Grisel, who is studying
journalism at UNAM, asks how the newspaper Granma
came to be. Here is a little part of that history.
On the morning of October 4,
1965, Cubans read Granma for the first time.
The night before, in a ceremony at the Charles
Chaplin Theater (today the Karl Marx), before an
expectant audience, the first Central Committee of
the Communist Party of Cuba was presented to the
people, and based on that Granma was created,
and Fidel gave an emotive reading of Che’s farewell
letter.
Immediately preceding the
formation of the Communist Party, the Unified Party
of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (PURSC) was
created in 1963. In its turn, it had emerged from
the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI),
made up of the 26th of July Movement, the March 13
Revolutionary Directorate and the People’s Socialist
Party, the revolutionary political groupings that -
each in its sphere and with its own strategies - had
confronted the Fulgencio Batista regime.
On September 29, 1965, the
PURSC national leadership approved the proposal on
the new composition of the Central Committee, which
in turn, as one of its initial acts, agreed to adopt
the name of the Communist Party of Cuba, and to
found the national daily newspapers Revolución
and Hoy, which then gave way to a new one,
Granma, the Central Committee’s official organ
right up to today.
RECEIVED WITH THANKS
From Argentina, José Manuel
Pietri sends us greetings and congratulations
From Mexico, José Antonio
Torres tells us that he is ashamed of his country
for having a “government submissive to the U.S.
oligarchy (...) I admire the courage of the Cubans
and their President for confronting the number one
public enemy of the world, Bush.”
The Spanish Mutual Economic
Aid Council writes to us, “We are heartened by the
continuing publication of Granma International,
the only newspaper that can be called a free press
to exist, and also the only one available in Spain
from which we can learn about what is happening in
this globalized world from another perspective.”
Joaquín (last name not given)
from Florida, sends us a message condemning the
blockade and any attempt at military aggression
against Cuba.
Another message of support
for Cuba comes from Javier Martínez, in Santiago de
Chile. “In a world scenario like the one we are
witnessing, it inspires hope to know that there is a
place where (although with difficulties) the ideals
of equality, fraternity and social justice are put
into practice.” |
