The news agency Agencia Informativa Latinoamericana Prensa Latina celebrates today its 57th anniversary devoted to confronting the monopoly of the big international news media and communication, as an alternative voice at the service of truth.
Created to counter the slanders against the Revolution of the island and the progressive movements, it had from the start the support of prestigious professionals, among them the Argentineans Jorge Ricardo Masetti, its first director general and Rodolfo Walsh, as well as Colombian Gabriel García Márquez.
Its foundation in 1959, made the idea of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and the Argentinean-Cuban commander Ernesto Guevara, that Latin America
had an international news agency that spread the truth.
That year, before over 400 journalists of different countries, orientations and ideologies meeting in Havana to verify the evidence of the crimes committed by the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, in the context of the known as "Operation Truth", Fidel Castro said it was pertinent for Latin American press to have truthful news media.
According to present president of the Agency, Luis Enrique Gonzalez, that need is intact, amid propaganda campaigns which have become a media war against Cuba, the progressive processes and causes like the fight against poverty or climate change.
Gonzalez stressed that Prensa Latina keeps immerse in the unequal battle against the great media moguls, despite the obstacles derived from the economic blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba, after its financial activity and hinders the work of its offices abroad.
However, he said, the will of all Prensa Latina workers, which he defined as a media in movement and development thanks to them, is to continue to the future, "at the service of truth".
This anniversary coincides with the 90th birthday of Fidel Castro next August 13, reason why the workers of the Agency inaugurated yesterday a photo exhibition dedicated to the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution.
The expo is showing at this capital Casa del Alba Cultural, under the title "Fidel Castro: 90 years", with an equal number of photographs taken by graphic reporters of different generations of this agency in relevant scenarios of the Cuban Revolution history.
Prensa Latina is present in 35 countries, has 65 agreements or protocols of exchange with agencies and international press media.
It is part of the direction of the Latin American News Agencies Union (ULAN in Spanish) and its services have about seven thousand receivers worldwide.
It transmits over 400 news reports in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Russian, Italian and French, which together with its radio and televisión services and its editorial house, the largest of the country, makes it the main multimedia center in Cuba.