Mercedes Azcano, director of the humorous magazine Palante, has died

October 23, 2021

Very few days ago, Mercedes Azcano Torres was celebrating the 60 years of Palante, a humorous newspaper that she directed for eleven years, and she could be seen busy, active, full of life.

Now it is very hard to believe the news of her death, last October 20th. It seems impossible. Another hard blow for the journalism profession that does not recover from one loss when it begins to mourn another.

Mercedes began her professional life which started in 1986 and in which her responsibility stands out before the Circle of Graphic Humor of the Union of Journalists of Cuba and her collaborations with Dedeté, Punto.cu and Mujeres. In her blog Humor de camino, she told us some "secrets."

There she wrote that she was a journalist, although she would have liked to be a "reporter-veterinarian-photographer-pastry chef-opera singer-chocolate taster," that she wrote short stories because she was lazy to write novels and that her great joys were her friends and girlfriends, her turtle, Carla and Eduardo, her brother.

Legal Matters, Like in the Movies, Thank You Speech, Mattresses with Filling, Help They've Changed My Husband on Me, are some of the many stories she wrote, comic narratives in which you can perceive the creativity of a brilliant author for her boldness.

Her stories are an extension of her. Stories to think about while you laugh…intelligent humor.

On this October 20th, when National Culture Day was being celebrated, Mercedes Azcano passed away. And it is ironic that on such a significant date we lose a journalist, who with a wonderful and creative team promoted the permanent release of a magazine of graphic humor and literature.

If we were to judge the artist by her work, we could deduce that Mercedes was a woman with a remarkable grace and joy of living. But if it were true that sadness hides behind laughter, it does not matter, because in Mercedes sadness was projected by fortifying and building, and making others happy, her audience, family, work friends. Let us imagine that Mercedes felt very sad and then wrote and created and delighted us with the grace of humor every day. Then Mercedes is transforming her sadness into art, making wonders, saving herself and saving us with laughter, again and again.