Guillermo Cabrera Álvarez

A journalist with a long professional career and a great Cuban politician. Founder of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba, of the Association of Young Rebels, and of the newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, director of the José Martí International Institute of Journalism.

He began his career as a journalist at Mella magazine, as a reporter. Founder of the Union of Young Communists; founder of the Cuban youth newspaper; when Somos Jóvenes magazine was created, he was director and founder of this publication. He was later promoted to the position of subdirector of the Granma newspaper, where he served until being appointed director of the José Martí Institute.

His interventions in plenary sessions of the Union of Journalists of Cuba earned him the nickname "The Genius"; along with the management tasks he performed in these different press organs, he always continued writing articles, including the popular sections "Abrecartas" from Granma, and "Tecla ocurrente" from Juventud Rebelde.

An activist of the Communist Party and member of the National Committee of the UPEC, he always put his creative talent at the service of the Revolution in diverse tasks and in several Cuban and foreign press organs.

He wrote several books about historical facts and figures such as Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto Che Guevara, and had an active participation in the VII Congress of the UPEC, where the strategy for the improvement of Cuban journalists was reactivated together with Commander in Chief Fidel Castro. In the dialogues of this meeting, in March of 1999, the affectionate nickname of "The Genius," which Fidel dedicated to him, emerged.

He died on July 1, 2007, victim of a heart attack in Guaracabulla, in the province of Villa Clara, where he was completing a tour through the center of the island. A day before, he had met with those from Espíritu Santo to celebrate the first anniversary of the gathering of followers of the "Tecla ocurrente" section, which appeared every Thursday in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

He obtained the Grand Prize from the International Organization of Journalism in 1972 for a report on an American soldier deployed in the Vietnam War.