The journalist and writer maintained his curiosity to explore the oral records of Cuba, rarely reflected in the official media, until the end of his life.
14ymedio, Havana, 27 November 2024 — Journalist and writer Argelio Santiesteban died this Tuesday in Havana at the age of 79, as confirmed on the radio station Radio Progreso’s Facebook account . The professor, scriptwriter and linguist is well known among readers for his work El habla popular cubana de hoy (Popular Cuban Speech of Today) for which, at the time of his death, he was preparing a fourth edition.
“Owner of all the words in the universe, violent guardian of useful words, monster of the adjective in order, feared for his verb, hated for his excellent humor,” is how journalist Elsie Carbo described him in a brief obituary published on Wednesday. Other colleagues and friends joined in the remembrance of a man whose lively conversation and rustic writing distinguished him amidst the soporific official press.
Born in Banes, in the current province of Holguín, in 1945, he learned to love books and good conversation through his father, a cultured man and a Mason. With the mischief that permeated all his stories, he related on one occasion that family example: “I am its diminished and botched second edition, and like my venerable father, I am a passionate lover of good sayings.”
The cultural context in Banes also contributed to his predilection for verbal turns, long conversations and good books. In particular, he recalled the influence that the magazine Portada, founded in 1953 , had in those early years, as it covered local topics but also historical reviews and daily cartoons. He defined his homeland as that “triangle where our nationality was forged,” because Holguín was the birthplace of Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Reinaldo Arenas, among many other figures in politics and literature.
The cultural context in Banes also helped his predilection for verbal turns, extended conversations and good books.
His participation in the Literacy Campaign in 1961 brought him closer to the way of speaking of the residents of the Sierra Maestra, a knowledge that he later complemented with other ways of saying things during his more than half century living in Havana. For five years he was a professor of Spanish and literature in the feared Castillo del Príncipe prison in the Cuban capital. This experience of teaching among “assassins and thieves” helped him to better understand the jargon of “the bad life in Havana,” according to the ethnologist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969).
Popular Cuban Speech of Today was born, precisely, from those multiple life experiences and from his constant immersion in the oral expressions that were heard in the cities and countryside of the Island. Santiesteban’s curiosity to explore those registers, rarely reflected in official media but widespread in homes and streets, remained with him until the end of his life.
In 1983 he was awarded the first edition of the National Critics’ Prize, an award that was placed in his hands by Manuel Moreno Fraginals (1920-2001), the author of El Ingenio, a key text for understanding the history of the Island, the birth of the sugar industry and the very identity of Cubans.
For his part, poet José Prats Sariol recalled on Wednesday that the Cuban Academy of Language never admitted Santiesteban among its members and described the journalist as a “brilliant lexicographer and writer of customs on a par with Eladio Secades,” a reporter who excelled in sports reporting and customs in the Cuban press of the 20th century.
Santiesteban also published his columns in various national media, where he addressed curiosities of popular speech, scientific discoveries, humorous texts and also brought to light small chronicles of the past, with musicians, politicians and intellectuals as protagonists. Among his titles, there is also Uno y el mismo (One and the same ) (1994), Picardía cubiche (Cubic Picardy) (1994), Anécdotas de Cuba (Anecdotes of Cuba ) (1999) and the volume on toponymy Cuando el pueblo juega a ser Papá Dios (When the people played at being Papa God) (2011), among others.
With his death, we lose an encyclopedic author who never let himself be trapped in his writing by ideological slogans or dogma. Through his texts he spoke of that profound Cuba that is not spoken of from the podiums or on national television.
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