The memory of Fidel, 25 years after the Round Table 

25 years ago, the Commander-in-Chief, in the midst of his creative work, conceived a television program to address national and international current affairs, as part of his permanent concern for the education and integral formation of Cubans, never based on dogmas or whims, but on his own analysis and convictions, always based on the truth.

Fidel was the supreme example of a leader who communicated with his people, and conceived ways and means to do so, so that the information would reach everyone, so that they could be part of it. Thus, he devised and carried forward the television project in the municipalities.

Most of his ideas and objectives in the field of communication were addressed by him in the Plenary Sessions and Congresses of journalists; scenarios in which he constantly “provoked” us to give our opinion, to contribute. He often practiced journalism himself, with a knowledge that went beyond the questions he asked, and he went deeper into every topic that, in his opinion, was not sufficiently clarified.

Many of us are witnesses of how he followed the issues addressed in the Round Table, and debated with the panelists, when he wanted to know something more or a different side of the matter in question.

On one occasion, at the end of a program dealing with the Middle East, he waited for us at the door of the elevator leading to the studio from which the Round Table was being broadcast. He greeted the panelists - in this case Randy, Dimas, Dufflar and me - put his hand on each of our shoulders, “evaluated” us, and set up a debate about what was happening in Libya, victim of the U.S. onslaught.

There, standing and in lively dialogue, we participated, for a little over an hour, in a master class on a problem that today, almost two decades later, has remained as it was then, and has even deteriorated, with extreme expressions such as the Israeli genocide in Gaza, or the lightning irruption of military opposition groups on Syrian soil, to the point of taking Damascus and forcing the abandonment of power by the President of that Arab nation.          

From Fidel's genius as an educator and communicator, the Round Table TV program was born, with the battle for the return of the child Elián González, literally kidnapped in Miami by the Cuban-American mafia, while his father, in Cuba, claimed the little boy, after the death of his mother in the dangerous maritime transit stimulated from the United States.

The TV program Round Table, like the open tribunes, also conceived by Fidel - in which the people expressed themselves for a just cause - immediately became powerful weapons of combat and defiance against the empire he hates.

How not to highlight the role, not only communicative, but also of popular participation, played by the Round Table during the years in which the Five Heroes remained unjustly imprisoned in the United States?

It was established as the informative and analytical program that, from television and under the guidance of Fidel, led the communication battle to achieve first the return of the child Elián González, and then the release and return to the homeland of Gerardo, René, Tony, Ramón and Fernando, The Cuban Five, as the people and the world knew them, for their conduct, firmness and loyalty to the Revolution that they protected.

From the Round Table TV program I fondly remember the frequent visits of the Commander-in-Chief to the place where we were preparing for the broadcast. I am sure that this is true for most of us who once sat in front of the cameras of that television set.

Celebrating these two and a half decades, we celebrate Fidel, his vocation to inform and promote analysis based on the truth, always in a simple but profound way, so that no topic would be left without being subjected to debate and timely criticism.