The radio crosses the ether and breaks the silence of the night little by little as we listen to it and transport us into a kind of different life, along with melodious voices which take us out of the daily reality.

Ever since the appearance of the of the first famous radio station with a regular broadcast in 1920, the KDKA from Pittsburg in the Unites States has developed an incredible and constant attraction for its listeners in spite of facing the challenge about the emergence and development of visual mass media like the movie or the television.

Bob Schulberg in his book entitled ´Radio Publicity, the Authorized Manual’ wrote: “It has not been created yet a big, shining, clear and colorful screen enough to match the capacity of the mind about creating its own alive images and the radio is an spectacular media to narrate .” (1994).

He was not the only one who ratified the advantages of the mean given David Ogilvy himself considered the radio as ´ the Theater of the mind´ and the Spanish academician Armand Balsebre used to consider it as a means of communication and expression where the listener is anonymous and absent.

As it is observed, the Radio, which is a mass media that many ones foretold that would disappear with the accelerated appearance of the new communication and information technologies, adapts to the new conditions from the own codes supporting it by including other more contemporary ones without putting aside the identity of its speech.

Could it be denied the importance about the radio mass media in Cuba of which its first broadcasts dates back to August 22nd, 1922 as the first one in Latin America? Should it be currently pertinent to question the radio journalism in our nation where it has been confirmed its mobilizing, instructing, educational, training and ludic nature?

It has been over a century ago where the radio already was playing a determining role. Radio Rebelde station, which is the official institution of the local 26 de Julio Revolutionary Movement, for instance, was created in the Sierra Maestra Mountain Range to counteracting the misleading information campaigns that were part of that struggle´s final stage.

Since then, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, along with their vision of combatants in arms and revolutionary thought, could see the importance of the radio mass media not only to mobilize as such but also to inform.

Here is Radio Rebelde from the free territory of Cuba! It would be listened through each Cuban home where it was then listened this radio station, clandestinely, and that is to say that it was much earlier than the triumph of the Revolution when it was certified the existence of a militant radio journalism.

Some time later, Fidel Castro himself while he was remembering the creation of the station of the Revolution, pronounced a phrase which would be forever by turning into the guideline of the work of the Cuban radio system:

“I see now the Radio as a great Radio Rebelde station.” Therefore, Fidel was then confirming, once again and through his futurist vision, its strategic importance in the nation and recognized its working staff, specially the journalists of the daily information.

Among others, these are my reasons:

The local radio mass media assumed the information which could not be provided by other mass media due to not only the reduction of their then limited edition but also their distribution and the related decrease of the informative spaces of the Television during the locally known as Período Especial (Special time Periodo, literally) .

There are valuable testimonies from the most difficult days of that period of time in relation to the Cuban battle in the furrows or the mobilizations of the local food program in far-off agricultural campsites, including the work carried out by Cubans, the strengthening of the cultural identity, their dreams, the criticism about what was done wrongly, the lessons learned from the collective intelligence and the battling character of the Cuban citizen.

There are millions who have experienced and followed near of little radio, very little ones at present by the way, the impacts of tropical hurricanes when there has been a lack of electricity due to obvious reasons or having known the last news about intense rains or diverse natural disasters broadcast by the local Institute of Meteorology.

In the journalist of contingency, the local journalists have participated and accompanied the members of groups made up of Cuban collaborators in nations such as Haiti, Honduras Venezuela, even in Africa, among others.

The radio has served as a bridge for thousand of Cubans from mountainous regions that live as near to their radio as to their land.

The Cuban radio was, like many other local mass media, at the forefront of the struggles for the return of the then boy named Elías González to his motherland through public platforms about the main fights which were always carried out, along with its characteristic journalistic responsibility. It also carries out important battles through all the nation´s economic and social fields where we live and are part of.

Almost since the very beginning of the Cuban Revolution, the radio mass media multiplied its signal to the ether and it was propelled beyond its border with the appearance of Radio Habana Cuba which broadcasts the truth about Cuba in the world for the over 55 years.

From only a small number of former stations, we are currently 96 ones and an almost an army of professionals as anything is despicable, by the way.

The radio journalism in Cuba means the history of Cubans, their happiness or sadness, their likes and dislikes, their working spirit, their colloquial way of talking, culture, sense of believing and history. The journalists of the radio are all of that, too.

Would it be enough for its own recognition that source of intelligence, talent and devotion of a group of journalists of the radio in Cuba which are part of its information programs, debating or participatory ones, along the impact of it on the public that shows the legitimacy and sense of belonging about what we do on the current radio that is sometimes difficult without being perfect ones? Where is valued the effort made by the local journalists in mountains, municipalities and nationwide about what happens in their nearest environment?

Denying the existence of a radio journalist in our nation means to deny ourselves to be a small; however, significant part of a work made about the necessary continuance of our own historic responsibility in this stage we have been living.

Which kind of adjective could be given to the Cuban radio journalism when it contributed, along with other colleagues, to spread the truth about the case of the Five Heroes? I remember recently the way the May first parade ended when the heroes of the Cuban Republic, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo used to thank to the Cuban radio for showing the image of the party of workers each single year to their prisons through the word, specifically the radio and the company that they always had and their relatives.

I also remember that walking through a great part of this Cuban geography the Cuban radio mass media have become part of the transformation of its communities and local environments through those who direct them and those ones who give constant opinions about what it is carried out as part of an act of honesty and total responsibilities and confidence by the main authorities in many territories while taking the current radio as a scenery to establish a clear communication with their people. So, if this was not a current, new and responsible journalism, if not, then I would not know how to name it.

What would journalists from the Cuban radio stations also say given they make fabulous histories from the magic of the people´s voice by approaching them to millions where it is also recognized the work by hundreds of people under the challenge of different obstacles even getting into a complex or very inhospitable ones, along with the happiness about knowing that we achieve to multiplying voices? Should we then consider ourselves as winners?

What would say those ones who question the legitimacy of radio journalism in Cuba when that same radio which has doubled itself and its people has achieved to challenge the natural technological development without losing its identity as part of its digital platform by reaching the proper and significant number of 68 Web sites and around 25 spaces even in English language?

All of that without losing our immediacy, the word used as a combat weapon that is currently multiplied into other formats which break the strict limit of a border: we are the Cuban radio with many local defenders on internet.

We are not perfect as no one could be it, but the radio has already its place and it has been given by the audience where it works has given that place to it given once the seismic events happened in Santiago de Cuba, for instance, it was the radio, along with other local mass media which multiplied its voice by assuming its instructing role and the responsible information due to there have been countless colleagues, who I do not name now as I do not want to forget any of them involuntarily, that taught us the related great curiosity that penetrates into those ones who love this mass media, and once that it appears, it never disappear.

On behalf of those colleagues, I state with complete satisfaction that there is abiding radio journalism in Cuba for the next years to come.