Georgina Almanza Lanz

Georgina is an actress, oral narrator, and radio host. For more than 60 years she was part of the artistic cast of Radio Progreso.

Acting and radio hosting have filled her artistic and professional life with meaning. She was a radio host at Radihora for the entire time this station remained on the air, before and after the triumph of the Revolution. She has worked with renowned directors, always playing characters, sometimes as protagonists, sometimes in supporting roles, which has allowed some of these performances to be preserved in programs selected as Heritage of our television.

She arrived at Radio Progreso in 1949, while still very young, when the station was located in the studios of the Havana-based Centro Gallego. She was present when they moved to the building at Infanta and 25, Centro Habana, where it remains today.

In 1950 she became part of the regular cast of the station along with Juanita Caldevilla, Elvira Cervera, Cuca Vázquez, Tino Acosta, Enrique Medina, and Pepito Noval, among others. Her main performances were in programs written by important screenwriters such as Marcos Behmaras and Enrique Cuscó.

Furthermore, she worked at other radio stations of the time, among them: RHC Cadena Azul, Radio Palace, Radio García Serra, and CMW Cadena Roja. She also worked occasionally at CMQ Radio, Radio Liberación, Circuito CNC, Radio Rebelde, and Radio Arte.

Despite having participated in productions at other stations, the largest and most important part of her career has developed at Radio Progreso. Among the programs of this station that have featured her performances, we can mention Tránsito, directed by González Yeras, and Nosotras, which remains on the air. The latter program is broadcast Monday through Friday and presents dramatizations that address topics related to the daily lives of Cuban women: there she combines radio hosting with acting.

She interpreted numerous characters in radio novels, many of them created by writer and journalist Dora Alonso and broadcast in the space Novela Cubana. Among them are: Luz María, the muleteer from Monte Libre, and Soledad Meneses in Sol de batey.

She was also a radio host at a station that had a short lifespan, between the end of the nineteen-fifties and the beginning of the nineteen-sixties of the twentieth century. This station, about which little is known, was called Radihora, and its function was identical to that of Radio Reloj: to broadcast the time every minute interspersing news; but it only had female voices. In the documentary Mujeres en Onda, by filmmaker Sisi Colomina, information is provided about this period of her life.

Although her career as an actress developed fundamentally in radio, she ventured into theater and television simultaneously.

On stage she interpreted characters such as Mary Warren in Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Mrs. Saint Maugh in The Chalk Garden, a work by Enid Bagnold staged by the theater company "Las Máscaras," directed by Andrés Castro. One of the highlights of her foray into theater is the monologue Las extraordinarias declaraciones de Rosa Penderton, by master José Antonio Rodríguez.

She was a founder of Cuban television in October 1950. She is remembered for her interpretations of the heroine Mariana Grajales in El Mambisito, a television series directed by Eric Kaupp; and grandmother Melesia in the novel Doña Bárbara, directed by Roberto Garriga. She acted in the film Ciudad en rojo (2009) by Rebeca Chávez.

Currently she belongs to the Contarte group, directed by the prominent narrator Elvia Pérez. Furthermore, she remains closely connected to the work developed by the Chair of Community Work in Oral Narration, presided over by Dr. Nisia Agüero. Georgina Almanza also had active participation in the Second Oral Narration Festival held in February 2010 at the Rubén Martínez Villena Public Library in Habana Vieja, with her project "Las Almanza".

The "Las Almanza" Project was founded in 2008 with the sponsorship of the Teatro de La Habana Center. From its inception, this initiative set out to keep alive the work carried out by her sister Enriqueta Almanza together with Celia Torriente in the creation of children's songs that are part of Cuban popular culture.

She has participated in several world Esperanto congresses (1990, Havana, Cuba; 1993, Valencia, Spain; 1996, Prague, Czech Republic; 1998, Montpellier, France; 2010, Havana, Cuba) where she has represented Cuba as part of the delegation and as an actress, as she has presented several shows in the framework of this type of events. It is worth noting the work Esperanto para siempre, premiered on the occasion of the 95th Universal Esperanto Congress being held in Havana, which received great reception from both the public and critics.

For her work linked to this movement, Georgina Almanza received the highest award granted by the Universal Esperanto Association. The distinction, which is given to personalities with brilliant artistic work within the Esperanto movement, made her the first and only Cuban to receive such an important recognition.

She is a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

In 2007, the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television awarded her the National Radio Prize for her lifetime work. She was also named one of the "Divas of Cuban Radio". Georgina Almanza is a National Radio Prize recipient.

Awards Received
Recipient, in 2007, of the National Radio Prize awarded by the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) for lifetime work.
ACTUAR Prize for Lifetime Work, awarded by the ACTUAR Performing Arts Agency in 2016

Diva of Cuban Radio
On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the poet, writer, and radio and television screenwriter, Georgina Herrera, Radio Progreso proclaimed together with the honoree Georgina Almanza, Lilia Rosa López, Caridad Martínez, Alicia Fernán, Carmen Solar, and Aurora Basnuevo, "Divas of Cuban Radio" for their dedication in body, mind, and soul to this mass medium of communication from their respective professions.