Walking early in the city, in any street or alley of the historic center, you can come across an ageless man, with a light walk and ears ready to listen to any story. When you see him go by, you will notice that he catches the smallest details: a high suport, old walls and even that kitten that hurried past who knows where.

That sensitive gentleman, who opens the door for you, gives way to you in the office and pulls up a chair for you, is a living encyclopedia; lover of nature, history and, above all, his profession. That is why I have the honor of bringing you closer to the journalist from Camagüey: Eduardo Labrada Rodríguez.

His Beginning

I was already waiting for him early for a meeting, when he greeted us he apologized for arriving after me. The reality is that I was ahead of schedule, because I wanted to be on time for our appointment at the headquarters of the weekly Adelante, a place that is his home and his life.

When the newspaper El Camagüeyano became the weekly Adelante, transformations and professionals with the desire to create were needed. From that period there are still several journalists, who were then students of the old Luis Pichardo School, located in the current building of the Perseverance Lodge.

They took on the challenge while they were training as graduates, within that group was Labrada, who since 1962 has been part of that group.

What he would repeat or what he would not

With his usual modesty, he tells me about his first work, the one he hasn’t read in years, because he doesn’t like economic issues. It was related to the production of cold meats (sausages), he believes that the numbers do not give people what they are looking for to be informed, because if you do not illustrate the news in an attractive way, they close the newspaper. If people don’t feel reflected in the press they don’t read it.

When asked about experiences that he would repeat, with enthusiasm and almost without thinking he lists: flying into the eye of a cyclone as he did in 1982, an emotion that he can feel again when thinking about the danger; the expedition to a cave in the Antilles is the second, the third and most important is the day to day with the population; guide them, listen to their problems, because many know that the journalist cannot solve them all, but they trust him.

Before journalism

He really enjoys being face to face with the people, this is due to his previous occupation as a social worker for 3 years in Sierra de Cubitas, then it was called community work. That relationship is vital for his well-known and requested section: Catauro.

But there is much more to discover in the eternal young man. Before journalism Labrada was a geography teacher, that’s why he loves nature, his speleological expeditions to Sierra de Cubita and Loma Maraguán, make him feel alive.

This September 3rd, he turned 85 and maintains so much energy, that he has just returned from a tented tour of the Maraguán Nature Reserve, that area of ​​hidden nature in Camagüey, where they found a submerged beach with fossil snails and nearby caves, in which rare species live.

He thinks that on one of those trips he “found and drank from the fountain of eternal youth”, because in this way he feels strong and attracted by the adventure linked to the environment; “When you feel with nature and become part of it, you are a better person,” he says.

The teacher

In the newspaper’s editorial office, each young person, already graduated or intern, has a special respect for “the teacher”, who in turn rejuvenates along them. He confesses that being surrounded by the boys has allowed him to stay active and useful in journalism, in the exchange with the young people he learns to use the new media, they help him, while he shares his knowledge.

He wittily comments that the state of the art in technology when it started in the press was the teleprinter and the typewriter.

 The city

He has an unfulfilled dream, because his rare and surprising chronicles about places, life stories and traditions as old as the former town, are still waiting for a printed book. His immense affection for the Office of the Historian has allowed a friendship of many years and a beautiful alliance for a common good: keeping the city alive in time.

Hand in hand with Eduardo Labrada I have traveled in this exchange to so many years and places, that it is time to return to what unites us in addition to the chronicles: the love for the City of the Waterpots.

We agree that in Camagüey you have to feel it, breathe it, if you go through the areas built in the 18th or 19th centuries, you get oxygenated, you relive those times and it turns out to be magical and very beautiful.

An honor for me

He would have liked to be a historian, but his profession and his chronicles have led him to revive the most unusual and brilliant traditions, those of each person who lives and works for this city and those are the ones that inspire him. Any old man sitting on a doorstep has a charming story, and you have to go find it.

That is why today, by being able to bring you closer to the exciting life of such a unique person from Camagüey, I wish that the water from its “fountain or from its waterpot” splash me with so much knowledge and in the not too distant future, walk in its footsteps discovering that city that we love and that lives in the chest of its inhabitants.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García