Sonya Surabhi Gupta.Photo: Prensa Latina
The role of Prensa Latina news agency in defense of the Cuban Revolution was highlighted by Indian professor Sonya Surabhi Gupta, from the chair of Latin American Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia University.
A scholar of Latin American literature, Gupta considers Prensa Latina a special marker, since many of the intellectuals of the subcontinent she has read, such as Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Argentinean Rodolfo Walsh and Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti, among other internationally renowned authors, had a relationship with Prensa Latina.
During my years as a student I heard about Prensa Latina and I had the opportunity to meet their correspondents here in New Delhi and little by little I realized their importance in the defense of the Cuban Revolution’, said the Indian academic in an interview for this news agency.
I see now in the current situation of India, which is the largest democracy in the world, but even so I believe that a democracy cannot function without a free press, and Prensa Latina can be, in that sense, a source of inspiration for many journalists here also in India, because it has been the alternative media which has always defended the Cuban Revolution since its birth and triumph.
In India we have great respect for Cuba and what Cubans have achieved in all these years of struggle and I know that this Prensa Latina’s 60th anniversary is a source of pride for the whole island and for the workers and journalists of Prensa Latina.
The outstanding professor, very supportive of Cubans, is translating into Hindi the non-fiction work ‘Operation Massacre’, by Argentine journalist, researcher, writer, critic and revolutionary militant Rodolfo Jorge Walsh.
Considered a pioneer in the writing of testimonial novels such as Operation Massacre – The First Non-Fiction Novel? Rodolfo Walsh participated in the founding of Prensa Latina, of which he was the head of Special Services, in the central office in Havana.
When I began to translate the work of Rodolfo Walsh and I realized that he was one of the first correspondents of Prensa Latina, and later I discovered that chronicle by Gabriel García Márquez about his important role in alerting Fidel Castro and Cuba about what he discovered in a cable about the imminent invasion of Playa Girón, those details increased my respect and esteem for his figure,’ said the academic.
