"The Lady of Stories" Dies in Havana at 105 Years Old

May 25, 2020

Haydée Arteaga from childhood would tell stories and recite poems whenever a visitor arrived at the house, as is customary in the Cuban countryside. The gift of storytelling came to her from her grandmother, who was determined to teach her to read and write with a primer and to narrate stories, skills that the girl mastered by age four and that would later lead her to win the hearts of the Cuban people and so many others in Ibero-America.

Although her mother dreamed of her becoming a concert pianist, Haydée studied Solfège and Music Theory, but the universe of narration had captured her forever and she would never again stop telling and writing stories.

"The Lady of Stories," as she has been recognized in our Caribbean land and in other nations, put her art in service of the greater good and created the Children's Cultural Talks group, with which, since 1935, she visited the marginalized neighborhoods of our country to teach art classes to the children and teach them, as her grandmother had done with her, to tell stories. Later, in 1980, it would be renamed Haydée and the Children, an opportunity to bring together childhood and imagination, drawing from the traditions of Cuban oral culture.

Director of the School of Oral Narration –the only one in Cuba and Latin America–, created under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, the artist, together with Eliseo Diego, worked in the forging of new narrators, who would go out to tell stories throughout and across the island. For that reason she said she wanted to be remembered as a "shaper of men," just as Raúl Castro called her when he presented her with a replica of Máximo Gómez's machete.

She wrote for radio, collaborated with several magazines such as Pionero and Mujeres, carried out intense work promoting reading, enhanced community activities, represented the Queen of the Antilles at various international storytellers' gatherings.

Now, when at 105 years old the tireless defender of narration has departed, she who enchanted with stories, capable of exalting the spirit of her audience, those who heard her will live convinced that she was an exceptional narrator, a Cuban rooted in her soil.

The essence of her art lay in her capacity to fictionalize, recreate, play with legends, myths, and events. In her extensive journey through the world of narration, Haydée accumulated countless stories and cultivated her own style, always rooted in the idiosyncrasy of our country, in the Cuban countryside where she was born there, in Santa Clara.

Conscious of the power of the word, "the Lady of Stories" moved, convinced, healed, and invited audiences of all ages to dream, for her art was charged with genuine emotion and absolute truth. She believed in her stories and images flowed from her lips.

Her contribution to literature, to Cuban cultural heritage, and to scenic oral narration are talismans that not only Cuba treasures, but also all those peoples to whom she brought her art, to teach them to grow and to believe. For all those reasons, this exceptional woman was recognized with the Alejo Carpentier Distinction, awarded by the Council of State, and with the National Prize for Community Culture 2000, from the Ministry of Culture.