Raquel María Mayedo García

Popular host of Cuban Television programs including Joven Joven, Contacto, Contra el Olvido and De tarde en casa.

Raquel Mayedo is a professional in Cuban media. She is a graduate of the Instituto Superior de Arte specializing in Theater Studies. She also studied ballet for a time.

During her studies at ISA she could not shake the feeling that she had spent a lot of time on ballet, an activity which, ultimately, she was not going to pursue. Upon graduation she understood how useful her ballet studies had been, as they placed her in the Public Relations Department of the Theater and Dance Division of the Ministry of Culture, a position normally assigned to people with much experience in the sector.

While there, a television director approached her needing information for a performing arts section planned as a new feature in a magazine aimed at teenagers, and he proposed that she take charge of the section. The idea appealed to her, even though she had no training as a broadcaster.

Finally, the project did not come to fruition and led instead to the creation of Joven Joven, a well-made program, but similar to many others. She agreed to be part of the team, though she retained the desire to have carried out that original section.

After receiving one of the great joys of her life, the birth of her son Angelitín when she was 30 years old, she experienced her peak popularity with the audience, but also her most demanding work period, as during those years she took on the responsibility of press chief of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba (BNC) and hosting the program Contacto, while also facing motherhood.

When the program went off the air she had to reorient herself professionally within the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión. She decided then to return to public relations, which had always brought her much satisfaction.

Currently she hosts the magazine De tarde en casa, which she likes for its conversational style and the diversity of topics it covers, but where there is an undeniable lack of pace, perhaps because being broadcast on Educational Channel 2 it is produced with a marked didactic intention and gives excessively long explanations about the topic being addressed, which can cause viewers to change the channel.

She has been fortunate to do in each stage a television program designed for an audience contemporary with her. In Joven Joven she was a young woman, in Contacto a young adult, and now she is in Contra el Olvido and De Tarde en Casa, in which she addresses people 35 years old and older, that is, those who have more or less the same life experiences as the host.

She had the opportunity to work with many designers, acquiring a little knowledge from each one. Today she is her own designer, and she also works with sewing, an activity she will never stop doing.

Although she did not achieve her dream of being a great dancer, she feels very satisfied with all the work she has done and is currently doing as a presenter on Cuban television.

Confessions of Raquel Mayedo
Limitations for ballet: I am short in stature, my limbs and my neck are a little short. With those physical conditions I was never going to become a great dancer, even though a slender figure and artistic bearing accompanied me.

A firebrand for a time: They say that during youth one is a firebrand and in maturity one becomes a firefighter. Back then I was still in the firebrand stage, so with Contacto I set out to depart a little from the usual canons of television, especially when it came to conducting interviews. You don't always have to start by asking: What were your beginnings?; or, What does it mean to you to work with such and such director? In fact, sometimes it is essential to take any approach other than that, so that the viewer doesn't get bored seeing the same thing in the music magazine that in the news program. Why can't you go straight to what's new, or what generates conflict?

Each space with its audience: Each space has its audience and you have to adapt to their pace. Monographs and series that aim to reach young people have to accept their codes and their speed in assimilating information; in the same way, you can't expect all elderly people to assimilate a fast-paced police drama with bloody scenes.

Cuban Television: When Cuban television finds the right tempo for its interviews and spaces it will achieve, in addition to instructing, entertaining. The day that is achieved, we will have come a long way. Our television has the advantage of being conceived for public welfare; it doesn't need to cyclically search for a scandal or a "big story" like foreign television stations, but sometimes it deprives itself of impact for fear of falling into sensationalism.
One of the great joys of her life: the birth of her son.

A firefighter: I, who do not possess such greatness and much less youth, try, from my role as a firefighter, to include modifications more through negotiation than confrontation, even though it doesn't always work. But the greats, fortunately, are firebrands for life.