When people reach 70, the chances are they begin to remember, with unusual strength, events that marked their lives and actions for good, but when it comes to an entity, a radio station reaching thousands of Cubans, especially Havana families, that birthday transcends with greater significance.

The Radio Cadena Habana radio station was founded on November 11, 1940, so this month its 186 workers are delighted, celebrating its 70th anniversary. As customary on this date, they congratulate each other in its various departments, take pictures and make recordings to treasure up the anecdotes of the oldest ones, of those who have been working there for 35 years or more, or even of the youngest –that is, of all workers who have contributed with their daily efforts to produce radio programs for our people.

Recent surveys evidence the strong popular support for this radio station, that it’s forever in the hearts and memory of the people as a result of different memorable events. Some of those who have played a leading role in these events recall that part of history with pride.

At the age of 90 and perfectly lucid, Francisco Vilarta remembers, overcome by emotion, the circumstances of the heroic deed that represented the recording of the July 26 Anthem or the March of Freedom, as it was first known. Paquito, as his close friends call him, was one of 11 people that participated in that action. He was, at the moment, a sound engineer, and at the same time a member of the station’s July 26 cell.

”Antonio García, a man who had a tango recording business approached me and said: we have to make a recording for the Revolution. I told him it could be done in two or three days because I had to look for the key in the recording room’s office, in order to transfer the music from the tape recorder to the studio machine.

When he told me it had to be done right then and there, I replied that it would be necessary then to talk to the other technician for the job, telling him it was a commercial and that we would make good money with it, because we didn’t trust him.  The recording of the July 26 March with the Carlos Faxas quartet was done between the two of us, him in the tape recorder and I in the machine.”

Faxas, a popular composer, pianist and arranger at the time, always comes to the ratio station to narrate or recall that unforgettable event. At 88, he remembers his links with the July 26 work in detail.

He says he spoke with Faustino Pérez, who was the head of the July 26 Movement in Havana, about composing an anthem that identified the Revolution and its vanguard movement, since he thought it was necessary. He said there was already one and that it only needed to be recorded in order to be spread, and told him where the person who knew about this was hiding. He went there with music paper and copied it.

Faxas said that "the anthem composed by Agustin Diaz Cartaya, an attacker of the Moncada Barracks, is very good. It has everything it needs.”

Carlos Faxas had the honor of directing the recording of the July 26 March, on February 15, 1957, at Radio Cadena Habana. “Recording it was difficult. I had a men’s quartet and I though that the sound would be stronger with male voices. Since two of them didn’t want to be involved in the recording, I had the idea of incorporating two female voices –those of Sonia Aragón and Manón de Asper- because a revolution can’t be conceived without the presence of women.”

In those days, Carlos Faxas was also performing with the America Theater’s orchestra, in which there were three musicians who played the trumpet, the trombone, and the drum.  With him in the piano, the accompaniment was completed.

“We recorded late at night at the Radio Cadena Habana studios, with a session we had asked for the quartet. The situation was very tense, because the dictator’s wife was having a party on the top floor apartment. The street was full of police officers, but we recorded anyway.”

The anthem, later on known as the July 26 March, was reproduced on acetates, the clandestine commercialization of which swelled the funds of the Movement and contributed directly to finance the struggle at the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

Like the survivors of the July 26 actions did at the Boniato and the Isle of Youth prisons, the inauguration of the Radio Rebelde station at the Sierra Maestra mountains contributed to the interpretation and spreading of the March, which continued to shake the bars that locked up the fighters for Cuba’s freedom.

Standing out in the Historic Place of Honor of the station, currently located on J and 15th streets, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolucion -among the prizes, flags and awards of these 70 years- is a picture of Fidel Castro. It’s a photograph illustrating another event of great significance in the work of this station, when the Cuban leader was interviewed by Radio Cadena Habana journalists upon his arrival to the port of Batabano, after being released from the Isle of Youth’s Model Prison.

The development of the revolutionary process after the triumph of January 1st, 1959, determined that the mass media went from private hands to social property. This made the owners of the station leave the country. The responsibility fell on Francisco Vilarta, the same man who recorded the July 26 March, who became the director of the station for several years.

In these days of celebrations for the 70th anniversary of Cadena Habana, the station received the warm greetings of its eternal worker: Paquito Vilarta. He advises young workers to defend their station; to love it as if it were their own home, and to work hard to make quality radio, like the Cuban people deserve.

After the political and administrative division of 1976, the former music station of Cuba assumed a new mission: to reflect the most important events of La Habana province, a task it has successfully fulfilled up to now.

It’s a party in style. The program of activities to mark this 70th anniversary includes tributes to personalities linked to the various events that had taken place at the station over the last seven decades, and special mentions to workers of music shows like “Musicales Habana”, “Habana 19”, “Enterese” and “El guateque”, among others.

The celebrated Argentinean singer of the golden voice, Carlos Gardel, used to interpret a piece that said that 20 years of life means nothing. But it’s impossible for years dedicated to a beautiful task not to leave a deep and significant mark. This is the case of the 70 years of work of Radio Cadena Habana, a station that is part of the melting pot of Cuban nature, and that will live forever while enjoying the love and respect of the people tuning in to it everyday.

A translation by: Silke Paez Carr

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