Breathe
By Claudia Pérez Atamoros
Beyond the stories, the gossip and the tribulations that always accompanied her; her tangled origins, the absurd confusion in her acting career and her enigmatic personal life, journalist Rosa Castro is a woman worthy of being brought back to memory, to the present, to recognize her for the first-rate career she developed and that she contributed so much to Mexican journalism.
And that, until now, no one had ever been interested in capturing it.
From this semblance, without sounding petulant but overflowing with satisfaction, Elena Poniatowska will find the answer to the question asked to Juan José Reyes Pruneda (Revista El Claustro, 2017, p. 39-40) deceased in 2021: What do you know about her? Is it true that she lives in Cuernavaca?
And dear María Luisa "La China" Mendoza will have to excuse me for ruining, just a little bit, her text. Trio of Strings where, in her always masterful way, she notes "because I imagine her as a child with a muslin dress wandering through the presidential palaces of Venezuela".. No, she never wandered around them. She was the illegitimate daughter of President Castro.
I thank @Opinion51 for the space and the commitment to those who have been part of the distinguished reporter's work. Rescuing her from oblivion and ending the injustice to which our guild and experts in the history of journalism have condemned her, for the mere fact of having maintained her Venezuelan nationality.
She remains in limbo: back home she is mistaken for a fellow countrywoman actress, and her work in the Mexican press is barely recognized; and here, she is not considered a native journalist, despite having developed her entire career in Mexico.
Rosa Castro rubbed shoulders with the greats, learned the trade of the greats, and became one of them, so much so that Poniatowska dedicated to her in 2023 the Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation in the Spanish Language, among a handful of other pioneers she mentioned.
Out of curiosity, I asked several colleagues from yesterday and today; journalists of the old guard; astute reporters and tellers of anecdotes from those glorious newsrooms where everything was known:
Who founded Siempre! magazine?
Not a single one, not a single one, hesitated. They all seemed like a heavenly choir.
-The teacher Pagés LLergo," said a
Another one, -Pagés, of course, by the way, you know the anecdote of....,
-José Pagés, my teacher...," says another boastfully.
-Pagés, after resigning from Hoy magazine..., I was told, almost giving me a shot....
-Pagés LLergo, the visionary..." sentences someone more daring than he adds:
-Don't you know?
Half-truths are accompanied by a large dose of forgetfulness and indifference; although it is true that José Pagés LLergo founded the magazine, he did not do it alone. At his side were, side by side, Jacobo Martínez LLergo and Rosa Castro.
Later, some others joined the magazine and helped forge the magazine and made it famous. renown .
Rosa Castro herself, in an interview for Excélsior in 1972, recalled: "I helped found Siempre! magazine together with Jacobo Martínez Llergo. The three of us had the necessary guts to undertake that adventure with nothing to start with but our hands. Arias Bernal helped us immensely".
In the article entitled And thus was born Siempre! Under the sign of the storm (Siempre!, No. 1, June 27, 1953, pp 54 to 59 and 90) Rosa Castro narrates in an endearing and very emotional way how this journalistic effort that brought fame and prestige to so many reporters and writers was born; that it reached the top and remained there for years, until that issue, 3678, where on the cover appeared Claudia Sheinbaum, today president with a hachimaki with swastikas... cover that, as it is known, had to be eliminated.
Journalism also blinds itself, limps and, sometimes, makes mistakes like this...
Here are some excerpts from the aforementioned chronicle:
This is the small story of a great purpose, of a great project... the story is mine and I must narrate it in my own way...
-You, too?
-Metoo, what?
-You also resigned with Pagés and the others... because of that photograph...
-Like a flash of lightning I perceived the whole situation. Tell me no more. I quit too. I quit this instant.
"It was a split-second confession. It all happened like a flash of lightning. My decision at that moment came from my lips, but not emanating from my brain, it came from where the most impulsive feelings come out.....
"The first conscious idea, as an imperative, was to look for Pagés. We have been told so much that we are crazy!
"I left him a note that went like this:
-José Pagés Llergo. Brother: I just found out what happened. Words are useless. I'm just telling you that I'm going to the top of the hill with you. Period. Arias tells me that you are looking for an office, etc. If you want, I'll help you put in the nails and so on. You know, to the top of the hill with you. A big, big hug. Rosa Castro"
Rosa Castro's health had frequent ups and downs. Throughout her life it was like this. No one was ever able to decipher if they were due to episodes of deep depression or physical problems, given that her heart was giving her some trouble...
She herself, at one point, states in this chronicle, that she found out late about Pagés' resignation from Hoy (two days late) because he had been absent for about 3 weeks due to health issues.
In fact, Rosawas concerned about mental health in Mexico, her own and that of others, which led her to also be a pioneer in this field. She had her primary psychiatrist, and at the behest of a friendly medical relationship, with the renowned psychiatrist Alfonso Millán, she helped him found the Floresta Psychiatric Hospital in 1938 and years later, in 1958, together they created the Pro-Child Mental Health Association.
Is it possible to separate Rosa Castro, the enigmatic, from the woman, from the actress, from the journalist? Was her life the best interpretation of a character? Why this disdain for denying and demystifying what was said about her, why her chameleon-like personality?
To write about Rosa Castro, the woman, the actress and the journalist has been to enter on shaky ground, in poorly told stories, to try to dive into swampy waters and plant orchids in arid lands... but the result has been worth it. A beautiful rose, multicolored, multifaceted. Full of thorns, with a firm stem, petals with a universal aroma and roots as bifurcated as its mental backstory...
Rosa Castro, Venezuelan by birth, developed her film and journalistic career in Mexico. A country to which she brought her tenacity and talent and by which she was seduced until the end. She loved this land with intensity. She made it her own.
Nothing, nothing, has to do with the "first Venezuelan actress in Hollywood", Lucila Méndez, alias Lucille Ince. And yes, she is the illegitimate daughter of former Venezuelan president Cipriano Castro and one of his wives. And no, she never filmed in the United States of America and instead she developed in our country an acting career that allowed her to share credits with national cinema figures, but the most important thing is that she contributed to journalism not only with her talent and her time, but also contributed, participated and recorded important national and world historical moments.
He died in the City of Eternal Spring, Cuernavaca, Morelos, on November 1, 1993, on the verge of his 88th birthday, and his ashes fly free and light.
What he was in life remained there, under the shade and at the foot of that huge and imposing Amate, at the foot of Tepozteco. Artemisa Castro, his granddaughter, tells that, at the moment of scattering the ashes at the foot of that beautiful tree, a gust of wind came and impregnated with them the relatives present, among them, the only living son, by then, of Rosa -single mother-, Edmundo, father of Artemisa and who was, in turn, son of a faithful promoter of communism in Colombia, journalist and editor, Alberto Manrique Páramo, who had to go into exile and would end up living in Mexico.
To be continued.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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