Haydeé Arteaga Rojas

Outstanding Cuban narrator, writer, reciter. She has written countless works for radio. With over 100 years and they call her "The Lady of Stories".

She was born in Sagua la Grande, a town located in the center of the island, on the banks of this river, seated on a stone or with her feet submerged in the water, a girl with an inquisitive gaze and dark complexion used to listen every afternoon to her grandmother's stories, born mostly from oral tradition. Enchanted by elves and fairies, at barely four years old she also began to tell stories. At that age she already knew how to read and write, thanks to her grandmother, and a year later she made her public debut in a performance held in her native Sagua la Grande, months before the family brought her to live in Havana.

Over time, she became one of the most prestigious narrators of the continent. Professor of Solfège and Music Theory; she was the reciter of Regino Pedroso until age 18, and learned narrative technique with Eliseo Diego.

In 1964 she began with him, as a listener in a course at the National Library. There she met Mayra Navarro, who at that moment was a typist; and Eliseo and María del Carmen Garcini had her study narration so that she would make demonstrations to the students.

«Eliseo wanted me to stay to work with them, but I couldn't. I did go frequently to tell stories to the children in a little room —similar to a cave— that was there (they say they will set it up again). For years she wrote for all the radio stations and worked in many places, among them the well-known store El Encanto.

But she never stopped narrating. She directed the only school of oral narration that existed in the country as part of the Culture-MINED Plan, conceived by Doctor Consuelo Porto, who called several people to help her with the project. They spent all of 69 preparing it. Students came from all over the country to Havana to take the course, and then returned to work».

For more than three decades she has worked with Eusebio Leal in the Historic Center of Havana.

She meets with adults once a month at the Rubén Martínez Villena Library, and with children at the Casa de la Obra Pía.

In November she received the Medal Plaque for Merit in Orality 2006, which the Ibero-American Itinerant Chair of Scenic Oral Narration (CIINOE) granted for the first time; and the National Prize for Storytelling 2006 awarded by the Center for Research and Development of Cuban Culture Juan Marinello, for the exceptional contribution to research and the development of culture, orality, communication and human improvement. Her book of children's stories, Namach, was presented last year at the Havana Fair.

They are twelve stories, some traditional and others of her own authorship. The title, read backwards, says Chamán, which is a kind of sorcerer from northern Asia, of witches from primitive societies who were mostly fabulous orators and converted the word into legend. Namach includes stories such as "Rosabella", "The Scarecrow Luisín" and "The Sun in the Middle of the Street", among others.

For Haydeé narrating is «My life. Like having a glass of water or breakfast in the mornings. Narrating is sharing. Whenever I tell a story I put technique in a corner and follow the style my grandmother taught me. I have managed to communicate even with spectators who speak another language.
«I am nourished by the roots of history. On every trip I make I look for the oldest people and investigate. I have met with peasants, with Huichol Indians (in Mexico), with the Yekuana, on the banks of the Amazon (on the Venezuela side)... Those are the true storytellers!».