Photo: Otilio Rivero Delgado/AdelanteCAMAGÜEY.-Their eyes reflect the pride of feeling part of the radio, media to which they dedicated the whole life and, more than a simple work, it turned into hearth and into space so that a romance was arising turned now in 30 years of marriage.

They have guided one of the radial programs most followed and wanted by the Camagüey´s public, the police Operative Guard. They are Maria Dolores Abín Valdés, or Loli, as they all call her, director and assessor of programs in Radio Cadena Agramonte, and her husband, José Aurelio Martínez Estévez, more known as Pepe Martínez, who performed for 42 years as actor, the director, announcer and adviser in the same broadcasting station.

- Pepe: how do you come to the radio?

- I come to the media because I always liked it, at the age of 16 I presented myself in Radio Cadena Agramonte to see if there was possibility and they said to me that not. I kept on working, in that moment, at the Provincial Company of Stock; the salary was minimal and to increase it I went away to study Military Topography in Matanzas. While I was in the course, I found out about a call where there were requested presenters, which it is what I always liked.

“My wife of that moment told me and I came to Camagüey. There were done three qualifying tests, based on three fundamental conditions that a presenter must have: voice, diction and reading. I passed the test satisfactorily and they proposed to me to work at Radio Cadena Agramonte as actor. I said that I wanted to be a presenter, the performance was not attracting to me, but as I am disciplined I did what was needed. That was in the year 1968”.

- What is what you like to do more in the radio?

- I consider myself to be as a musician, poet and madman. When I entered, I learned to do everything; where I worked more and what still I like more, is to direct programs.

- And the journalism?

- I practiced it only by implication, so I directed some informative programs and did locutions in them, but this is not what I like more.

- And you, Loli: how did you begin?

- I come just graduated from the University of Havana, of the specialty of Contemporary History. They assign my ballot for Camagüey and the dad of my son found a position in Radio Cadena Agramonte as assessor of programs for the Dramatist.

“I believe that I entered the most difficult, most complex specialty, and keep on being an assessor of dramatized programs, but also of varied, this way I began to know the radio. I learned with many partners, some of them are even already retired, other deceased, I listened to all the advices and during these years, which are already going to be 35, I have put them into practice”.

- How does Operative Guard arise?

- In the year ‘87 the program is founded, by means of Pepe, which was the director; Luis David Díaz, the writer, and I, the adviser. We form a great team, although we did not know anything of police. We had to learn very much with the collegues of the Minint of that moment. Then, in ‘89, Pepe fell ill and the administration called me to direct the space. These were the first steps as director, since previously I had been evaluated only like assessor and I did a short time locution, but in that year they evaluate me as director and this is what I do now: director and assessor. I already am 35 years and I am thinking of retiring to make way for the new generations”.

- How did you meet?

- In the radio. I took part in his recordings, to learn, and because the institution was demanding to link to presenters and the directors of experience. We already have 30 years of marriage.

“We have taken as a norm the mutual respect to the work of each one. This respect, as well as family, and as partners, must not get lost, and this is what we have done, and also for the sake of the listeners so that they receive an agreeable product, and they value it, as they do it with Operative Guard, so although they are not specialists of the radio they hear us and know”.

- What do you define as the most interesting and most difficult thing in the life inside the radio?

- The radio is a collective work, several factors get involved to achieve a program and each of them has a definitive importance, but sometimes the direction becomes an anonymous heroism, because the listener listens to the actor, to the presenter and says “very nice”, but he does not know the work that the director experienced to direct correctly this actor or this presenter.

“The radio for me is indisputable and palpable part of my personal life - mentions Pepe - because I have turned out to be realized inside the media, in spite of difficulties, of anxiety, of absence of sleep, and with a very clear thought that was taught to me by those who preceded me: I do not work for me, but for a listener public to whom I owe them respect.

“On the other hand, I am always trying to be impartial. My son, José Raúl Martínez, is an actor and I do not take part in his evaluations. Once I said to him: ' if I can help you in something, you come to see me at dawn, in the daytime, at the hour that you want, but when I should be in the assessment board do not count with me’. The same with my wife, the good thing well, the bad thing badly, although to the best notary a blot goes away.

“It was difficult when in the year 2010 the health was striking me very much, and to go upstairs was difficult to me, then I decided to retire me, but I remained like adviser of programs of which I was founding: the historical Immortal Pages and the police Operative Guard, so I remain linked to the ICRT”.

- What can be improved inside the radio?

- I believe that it is important to form good directors, and this is its Aquiles's heel. The director of television has to work where the light is, to see where it enters, the language of the cameras … and in the radio ditto, because it is, as said the great presenter Manolo Ortega, “sound to see”. If you do not manage to create the image you are not doing radio, it is necessary to handle very well the language and the radial signs so that the message comes to the most erudite or to the most illiterate. This is a responsibility of the director and the direction capacity is trumping us in the country in the radio programs, and in the television.

- Could you sum up in a phrase what has been for Loli to work at the radio?

- To stop being oneself to turn into listener, in the satisfaction for who we work, with love, tenderly, because to start newly 25-year-old postgraduate, and to do a life there inspires that, very much love.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez