Beirut, June 16, 2020. The Cuban Embassy in Lebanon congratulated the Latin American Information Agency Prensa Latina on the 61st anniversary of its founding. The diplomatic mission thanked Prensa Latina for upholding the prestige of committed and revolutionary journalism.
The Embassy sent a special greeting to the correspondent of Prensa Latina in Lebanon, Armando Reyes and paid a heartfelt tribute to Ulises Canales, an excellent professional who had the honorable task of reopening the agency's correspondent in Lebanon in 2014 and who unfortunately recently passed away .
! To all the collective of the agency around the world, our respect, admiration and affection!
Six decades later, disinformation campaigns and false news continue to travel the world, known by the loudest and most globalizing name of fake news in this era of viral hoaxes that are disseminated via the internet. Media monopolies are still in place, and with bitter frequency the truth is a - hopefully - secondary element in the agendas of the big media.
Three weeks after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Operation Truth was held, a massive press conference that for two days brought together more than 400 journalists from Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and the United States in Havana, in which the recently The new revolutionary government exposed what was happening in a country that was experiencing a radical change.
It was the Cuban offensive against the big international news agencies. It was also the first time that, in the early and growing hostility scenario that the Island was facing from abroad, someone spoke of a possible economic blockade.
On January 22, the second day of Operation Truth, Fidel said: “We do not have international cables and you, Latin American journalists, have no choice but to accept what the cable tells you that is not Latin American. If you allow me to say something that I consider I have the right to say, because it affects the interests of my country, I tell you that the Latin American press should be in possession of means that allow it to know the truth and not be victims of lies " .
Six months later, on June 16, 1959, the Latin American Information Agency Prensa Latina (PL) was founded. Its first signals were released unspectacularly, modestly and in very difficult conditions. It was the first Latin American communication project of international scope with an alternative vision of the regional reality, the central axis of its coverage to this day.