The Cuban Connection: Who Controls Latino News?
Viewers saw Castro at a wreath-laying ceremony on the battlefield where Marti fell. Then Vice President Carlos Lage interpreted Marti’s legacy. “Cuba isn’t governed by American laws,” Lage declared. “Cuba isn’t governed from the U.S. Congress. Cuba is governed solely by its own people.”
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“What happened during the weekend,” Aponte told me, “is that somebody told Mr. [Antonio] Guernica, the general manager, that some communistic propaganda had been aired on Channel 66. Monday at 9 AM he called the newsroom outraged. He said, “How dare you air such a piece of trash!’ He used a lot of foul language.”
A day later, says Aponte, Guernica called a staff meeting. “He started by saying that Jackie had made a terrible mistake by airing communist propaganda. He used foul language again. We all knew, according to him, that she had an agenda. And we all knew what it was. And because of that he’d made a decision–she’s no longer going to be the news director.”
A TV journalist for 23 years, Gallardo, born in Chicago to a Mexican father and a Honduran mother, offers herself as a victim of a notorious bias in Spanish-American journalism. “A small number of Cubans dictate ideology,” she told me. “They control the media, and they have the money to do so.”
These Latinos and others spoke among themselves of calling on Guernica and demanding an explanation. But they didn’t do anything. Last Friday Sandra Aponte and a WGBO field producer were fired. Guernica told them the jobs were being eliminated in a reorganization. Aponte believes their crime was “guilt by association” with Gallardo.
“I personally am not alarmed by fidelity to the Second Amendment. When a young man expresses that fidelity by blowing up a federal building it’s safe to say that man was overwrought. But it is not the role of Congress to legislate emotions.”
