14ymedio, Bertha Guillen, Candelaria, 10 November 2017 — It has not remained seated like the famous figure of Auguste Rodin, but nor has it been able to walk as much as its editors would like. The magazine El Pensador (The Thinker) edited in Guanajay, Artemisa, is two decades old and its founders dream of being able to publish it on the internet one day.
This Thursday, the notes of the Guanajay Hymn marked the beginning of the celebration of 20 years of a magazine born in the lay community centered around the San Hilarión Abad Catholic Church. A time that has passed rapidly for some, but that others, like its director José Quintero Pérez, remember every moment of.
“Our first issue was released on 9 November 1997 and it was edited by hand, typed on a typewriter, then we cut out the articles and pasted them on a sheet, which we photocopied and that’s how it all began,” he tells 14ymedio.
On the island, publications linked to the Catholic Church filled a gap for decades that could hardly be filled by other independent magazines, due to the strict controls maintained by the Government on the distribution of printed material.
Vitral (Stained Glass) and Espacio Laical (Space Lay) were some of the most well-known magazines born from the interaction between the concerns of the church and contact with communities. However, despite institutional protection, they were also victims of censorship.
In 2010, a report by the ISP agency counted 46 bulletins and magazines plus 12 websites and seven electronic bulletins that reached four million Catholic readers on the Island and many other Cubans in exile. A phenomenon that has been enhanced with the emergence of new technologies in the country.
The popular Weekly Packet has, for more than two years, had a Christian section that is made up of Catholic and also evangelical materials. An independent television channel has also been born from the interaction between faith and the digital world.
El Pensador, still far from having even a website, “has been concerned to understand and be part of the construction of a better future for all Cubans,” says a faithful reader who participated on the anniversary this Thursday.
With a bimonthly frequency, the magazine issued its 119th edition this week to approximately 125 subscribers. Although it has not managed to position itself on the World Wide Web, the publication is well known in Pinar del Río and Artemisa.
“To say that it’s been easy would be to lie. They have called us a little newspaper, a little newsletter and a bulletin. We have had to adopt different formats, sometimes with more pages, sometimes with fewer,” recalls Ángel Mesa, one of its founders. “We have spent many sleepless nights to bring an issue out, but we have the support of our readers,” he declares.
With a majority of Christian topics, El Pensador also includes among its pages social issues ranging from criticism of the deterioration of popular festivities, to the serious ethical problems that surface on the island, a situation that the Government itself has had to recognize.
“We are happy because we have been faithful to the objective of communicating,” and in the pages of El Pensador there is no “exclusion of people,” points out Quintero Pérez.
Mesa reports that the name of the publication arose from the readings of Father Félix Varela’s texts where he invited people “to think first.” The initial team has had to train on the fly.
In these years, the editors have not been exempt from criticism, unpleasant situations with the authorities, and, from time to time, some have has felt an urgent desire to desist, but the group has remained fairly complete despite the difficulties, says Mesa.
“I want to congratulate El Pensador for daring, it is not easy to dare and it can become a problem, but this world has been changed by people who dare, who dared because they dreamed that things could be different,” says a Baptist pastor who participated in the celebration for the 20 years of the magazine.
The magazine “has dared to dream that Guanajay can be different, if we think about this we can make a good contribution to our country,” he added.
Flavia, one of the young readers, believes that the main challenge for the editors is to increase the number of contributors and to remain as an alternative space for the “forgotten exercise of thinking” to continue “questioning all things until the truth in them is found.”
