Cuban journalism and history share common spaces of repression and glory. Authoritarian governments almost always bring with them deletions in the freedom of printing: so happened in different times of the colony and almost all the time in the Post Republica of Cuba. Since independence, abolitionist or annex propaganda of the 19th century, until the newspapers opposed to dictators Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, the clandestine press was always an inexhaustible source of innovative ideas for these outdated social orders.
Eduardo Facciolo and Alba was born February 7, 1829,
in the Havana village of Regla.
The first voice of the Cuban press against the authoritarian regime Spanish became “The voice of the Cuban people”. A newspaper that, with the same title was released on June 13, 1852, to become the first underground newspaper published in the island and also the first to deliver a martyr of the national press. Separate merit has El Habanero, whose circulation also mocked the colonial censorship; but this was printed in the United States.
HOW THE SITUATION OF THE ISLAND BECAME A NEWSPAPER
Cuban owners and landlords who were grouped in the current first reformer of the colonial system, already in the decades of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, lost all hope of obtaining prerogatives by the metropolis and became supporters of the annexation of Cuba to the United States. The abolition of slavery in the British Antillean positions, in turn, encouraged successive uprisings slaves in Havana and Matanzas; Spain sent to general Leopoldo O’Donnell to calm exalted “Criollos”.
The story began with the repression of the conspiracy of “la escalera” a terrible rebuke against the slave trade, and half of blacks and mulattos free layers, and reached up involved in the Cuban annex stream rich owners, who often used in its propaganda the word ‘independence’ or the phrase ‘tyrannical separation of Spain’. From the trenches anexionistas edited the first Cuban underground printed in La Habana, place where the Western Club, the most powerful group of this doctrine are grouped. Other Cuban anexionistas groups were one in Las Villas – closely related with the activity of Narciso López – and Puerto Principe – which had ramifications in the East. Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, known as the Lugareño, led the latter group and began to edit the newspaper La Verdad, organ of the Cuban anexionistas in exile.
The abolition of the Industrial lighthouse in Havana in the year 1851 and the incarceration of his director John S. Trasher, for his work on behalf of the annexation of most of the West Indies to the United States, was one of the steps that led to the emergence of this new release. Because, at the initiative of the aforementioned Club West, create a clandestine newspaper that would reflect their interests, Trasher suggested the journalist Juan Bellido of Moon get in touch with his friend, the typographer Edward Facciolo and Alba.
But, who was Edward Facciolo and Alba?
A man with that sort of Criollo mixture between Spanish and Cuban, who turned him into opponent of domination Spanish on the island, especially after the execution of the poet Gabriel of the Concepción Valdés (Placido) as part of the repression to the Cuban abolitionist movement. Careful linotipista their merits admired the eminent intellectuals Cirilo Villaverde, José García Arboleda, José María Cárdenas and up the proprietary Americans of El Faro Industrial de La Habana, who hired him in 1844. By these fraternal ties, at the proposal of the correspondent in Havana of annex newspaper edited in New York the truth, the young man had no hesitation in accepting.
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER AND FIRST DEAD
In a makeshift workshop, with a mobile printing, two thousand copies of the voice of the Cuban people, whose subtitle was to run to the Spanish soldiers saw the light: ‘body of independence’. The editorial that would follow such declaration would be even more revealing: our cause is just, sacred and noble and expect from our brothers, prudence, value, reserve and contempt for the cowardly informers, caution with suspects and spies, and thus the voice of the Cuban people will be heard from the American border to the old continent where reside the tyrants.
The daily anexionista, from its first issue, certainly exceeded national borders, and even major foreign newspapers published excerpts from his articles. While the rest of the national press did not by aware, and the authorities sides mudslinging in discovering the printing press and those involved in each of the editions.
A kind of trunk, which they called sarcophagus, allowed the relocation of the printing press by equal number of times that editions had the newspaper: four. The second issue was circulated from July 4 of that same year, with a total of three thousand copies, but with the name of the voice of the people; the third was printed the 26th of that month and the last never came out of the printing press.
On August 23, 1852, an informer discovered Facciolo while printing the fourth issue, when it had acquired its own printing press located at Calle Obispo. Joaquin Llaverías Martinez, who investigated and systematized the main features of this newspaper.
Despite the fact that the prosecution included Juan and Antonio Bellido Moon, Andrés Ferrer, Juan Atanasio Romero, Florentino Torres, Juan Antonio Granados, Felix Maria Cassard, Antonio Palmer, Ramón of Palma, Antonio Rubio, Ladislaus Findysz Urquijo, Ildefonso Estrada and Zenea, Francisco Pérez Delgado, Ramón Nonato Fonseca, the young typographer’s 23-year-old pleaded guilty and was sentenced to the death penalty in garrote vil. The rest of those involved, in accordance with minor charges were imposed other sanctions except Juan Bellido of Moon and Andrés Ferrer, who managed to escape to the United States.
Thus, on September 13, 1852 he was applied the death penalty in the Explanade of La Punta; but that day also became to Cuban journalists in tribute to the courage of the clandestine press professionals.
Soources:CubAhora/Machado/TheCubanHistory.com