CAMAGÜEY.- He was a correspondent for Prensa Latina in Camagüey when I met him. Back then, an agency journalist was equivalent to an Olympic medalist. For a medium like this it is not enough to know the technique. It involves the skills portrayed in that special sense of smell to discover the news in a country marked by a crisis of newsworthiness.
It seemed to me a rare combination of the simplicity of a representative of that medium of international projection with transparency regarding its origin. He previously worked as a veterinarian. He did not hide the condition of being reoriented, a discriminatory adjective within the guild itself; however, the fact that he occupied the position and not a graduate confirmed the truth: a university degree does not make you a journalist.
That colleague devoted to writing soon after made headlines when he became President of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) in Camagüey. Now that gentle man named Sergio Raúl Morales Vera (Holguín, 1957) receives the dedication of the 32nd Book Fair in our province.
─If you were born in Buenaventura, you are “Bonaverense” and blessed? Do you feel that way?
─Good adventurer by name and blessed to live here and until today.
─A province that has made its own dedicates the fair to you. What reasons brought you to Camagüey and what reasons keep you here?
─Love and my vocation for changes.
─From veterinary medicine to the profession of words, have you written yourself better?
─The condition of a writer is genetic, the rest is circumstantial.
─Poet, narrator, journalist and songwriter who has put his work as a politician first by presiding over Uneac, do you regret it?
─Martí was much more than me and he gave much more than me. There is nothing to regret. Service to others is a duty that is fulfilled “simply and naturally.”
─In 2023 he was in charge of the opening speech of the Book Fair. What message does he dedicate for this edition?
─Nothing like the exercise of words, whether spoken, read or written, to develop imagination, intelligence and creativity.
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BRIEF LITERARY CURRICULUM He has published For the Pioneer (Gente Nueva, 1980), For Life to Grow (Unión, 1984), Júbilo en Auction (Ácana, 1996), El tiempo y yo (San Lope, 1997), The Credentials of the Dawn (Ácana, 1998), Intimate stained glass windows (Ácana, 2006), Wings for a story (Ácana, 2009), A big story and another small one (Ácana, 2012), The decipherer and other stories (Montecallado, 2015). His poems and stories have been awarded in various contests and included in anthologies in Cuba and other countries. |
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez