MADRID, Spain.- On April 11, 1901, the first modern journalistic company in Cuba emerged in the city of Havana, the newspaper The world, one of the most important and read in the country. He was the initiator of the Island of newspapers with color advertisements, eight columns and engravings.
Founded by José Manuel Govín with an American cousin of the trust tobacco producer, Rafael R. Govín, had as editor-in-chief Manuel Márquez Sterling, Secretary of State of Ramón Grau San Martín, member of the Academy of History and creator of the newspapers Herald ofCuba y The nation.
In The world They published, among many other renowned intellectuals, Víctor Muñoz, who was in charge of sports reviews and the chronicles “Junto al Capitol”; the professors Herminio Portell Vilá and Manuel Bisbé, the photojournalist Adolfo Roqueñí. It started with four pages and grew to more than forty. The Sunday supplement was also added The Illustrated World.
In 1926 the newspaper passed to Rafael’s heirs. Then several owners would come until 1949 when Eliseo Guzmán, Amadeo Barletta, José M. Martínez Zaldo and Luis J. Botifoll acquired it. In 1950, the then president of the Republic, Carlos Prío, became its main owner. The Board of Directors was chaired by Luis J. Botifoll and Barletta, who in January 1954 broke into the newspaper with an armed group, changed the edition and appropriated the shares of Prío and Botifoll.
The “In Cuba” section of the magazine Bohemia recounts the events the following day the 10th, under the title “Editorial Conflict.” He begins by commenting: “The regular readers of the newspaper The world that on the morning of Saturday the 2nd they went to its pages (…) they noticed with surprise that a front-page article appeared mutilated, with ominous blank spaces (…). Something serious was happening to the now more than fifty-something daily newspaper on Virtudes Street, which throughout the republican period has acquired a fair reputation as an opinion body that is measured in its projections and independent in its position in national public life. The mystery was discovered that same night by Free Press (…) when reporting in a very prominent note about ˈThe El Mundo Incidentˈ (…)”.
In January 1959 it continued to circulate. But February 23, 1960 stands out Navy Diary: “Last night it was learned that the companies had been intervened Telemundo S. A. and the newspaper publishing company The world”. Other media reported that by order of the Minister of Recovery of Embezzled Assets, he was appointed director of The world Dr. Guillermo Santiesteban, replacing Raoul Alfonso Gonsé. Days later, the geographer and historian Levi Marrero replaced Santiesteban and from October Luis Gómez Wangüemert would direct it. They reported that due to Levi’s illness; He left Cuba in 1961.
The newspaper would add to the controversies that abounded in the press in the sixties; a debate was established on science and religion related to the French philosopher, theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Hungarian atheist documentary “In six days?”about the creation of the universe.
In February 1969, a fire destroyed the workshops and the editorial office of The world on Havana’s Virtudes Street; Shortly after, the popular newspaper would stop publishing, which survived much longer than most of the so-called Cuban bourgeois press, which began its disappearance at the beginning of that decade, with the arrival of Fidel Castro to power.
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