Since the first five years of the last century, the printing press of El Camagüeyano has established itself as the main one in the City of Waterpots. It was located at Finlay No. 4, the current headquarters of the Camagüey Folkloric Ballet, and from there it became a fundamental piece of gear in one of the first press companies in the country, El Camagüeyano S.A.

“They came to create practically a monopoly. There, not only the circulation of El Camagüeyano was carried out, but also of other newspapers in some municipalities, because as they were a company, they leased that service”, comments the journalist and researcher Eduardo Labrada, who in his first years of profession was able to feel the pages that came out of that printing house.

That place in Finlay’s alley had different structures. The journalist Malena Alvarez refers that after 1940 on the upper floor was the space for writing, journalism, thinking; there were the offices of the director Walfredo Rodríguez Blanca, Senator of the Republic, and the chief of information. At the bottom: the workshops, the telegram, which allowed receiving the cables from the news agencies, and the HOE printing house – which could print 32,000 copies per hour.

“There was also an advertisements department, several journalists even charged for the ones they got for the newspaper, that allowed them to be on the street all the time. In the afternoons, between 6:00 and 7:00, work began in the workshops, and in the early mornings it was printed. Already at dawn, the alley was full of boys and other older people, who distributed it and thus earned a little money”, adds Labrada.

After the revolutionary triumph in 1959, El Camagüeyano printing house began printing the nascent newspaper Adelante, while maintaining the regular publication of his daily. After El Camagüeyano stopped publishing, the printing press continued making it possible for El Adelante to reach the hands of the readers from Camagüey.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García