At the beginning it was called of Victory, of Freedom ... It didn't matter what. Then, the media, the radio stations and television channels at that time felt that the revolutionary triumph was clear and that the caravan represented the triumphal entry. I was not there. I am just trying to describe it. Those who lived through the event recall balconies filled with waving flags, flowers, doves hovering over the crowd of people and the occasional inn, as the one who mediates when observing. The horns and cheers of the humble were the main means of showing the popular clamor when the bearded Fidel Castro entered Havana that afternoon of January 8, 1959.

To my mind only come the images taken by the television channels that joined the people and the historical event, not only for Cuba but for the world. The photographs captured by the most enterprising professionals still reveal the joy. Just to give an example of the media who joined in, the Bohemia magazine published on the eleventh an extraordinary number, with two hundred and eight pages and a million copies, a record number for a run, for the readers of the first Edition of the Freedom.

A few days before, the news published by Radio Progreso and Telemundo spoke of dictator Fulgencio Batista's flight from the presidential palace before the triumph of the Revolution, and announced the beginning of a new media age. Although at that time, ninety-eight percent of the shares of the Cuban National News Circuit belonged to the dictator, the truth is that the nascent Radio Rebelde and others in the heat of the victory spread the truth at every turn.

As the Revolution was consolidated, the reality was increasingly less fleeting. The testimonies of those who witness and the research of those most experienced in communications show that the owners of the radio and the top leaders of the advertising industry in the early months of 1959 adopted an attitude of caution. Therefore, one of the first measures taken by the revolutionaries was to abolish the subsidies the press and radio stations and television channels received in confidence.

Thus, shortly after, the media began to tentatively consider the Revolution as a client to whom they could provide services. Little did they know, but maybe I sense it was sooner than later it would pass from privately owned to social or state management. However, the magnates, from the early date of January 12 of that year, had elucidated the next steps for the Revolution, who then operateded the twelve stations of the national network, by Resolution of the Minister of Government Luis Orlando Rodriguez.

The Caravan of January 8, 1959 arrived in Havana, as the witnesses and documentary record of the era relate, full of dreams and built on the basis of media pluralism. As I was not there, and with so many accounts to cover the fact, I prefer to believe the people who show me the pictures and images of the time. The cheers are certainly reliable sources to review.

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