Breathe
By Claudia Pérez Atamoros
PART III
Journalists and their media
Rosa Castro's formal entry into journalism was in 1938, in the magazine Jueves de Excelsior with a sentimental column. She developed her cinematographic career at the same time and in the fourth and last part of this recovery, we will dot the i's and cross the t's about that career full of myths and erroneous data.
He wrote in the beginning for La Familia and assisted Alberto Manrique Páramo in writing articles for the newspaper of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), El Popular, in which he was the founder, director and shareholder. Although they had two children, they never lived together. At that time Alberto, the eldest, was 12 and Edmundo was 8 years old. The only memory the youngest son kept of his father, according to what his daughters told me: running around Paseo de la Reforma.
Eduardo Correa and Manuel Horta, editors at the time, perceived her talent and encouraged her. At Excelsior, Rosa shared the editorial staff with Carlos Denegri and Concha de Villarreal. Concha de Villarrealwho years later died in an asylum in Venezuela.
Rosa Castro was then almost 32 years old. She was born on December 1, 1906 in the parish of Catedral, in Caracas, Venezuela, as reported on December 22 of that year by the first civil authority, Antonio Madríz Lander, natural daughter of Dominga Domitila Hernández (one of Cipriano Castro's wives, as stated in the book Yo Dictador me Confieso by Perico Ramírez).
On January 16, 1908, she was baptized in the same Cathedral and there Trino Castro, a general from Caracas, brother and compadre of the ex-dictator, Rosa's father, acording to the only two pieces of documentary evidence I obtained, acted as witness: The baptismal certificate (found by Juan Bello Osio) and the sworn testimony of two half-brothers of Rosa, that her father was Cipriano Castro, obtained by this reporter through a source after the payment of the not inconsiderable sum of one hundred dollars.
The other living sources, her granddaughters, as well as the published writings of La China Mendoza, Elena Poniatowska and González de la Garza.
Around her there was always only culture, art, journalism. The father of her children was in his element in that world of news, galleys... of paper and scoops, of worn soles and unique headlines, of public relations and advertising; and she fell in love with it.
He grew up in the shelter of the Mexican intelligentsia and the Mexican left. He was on familiar terms with all of them; he learned from the pen of Rafael Solana, Carlos Pellicer, Vidaurrutia, Elizondo, Novo, Gamboa and so many others.
She worked in many different and varied media for a little more than 5 decades. She wrote for El Día (a great story of female journalism was told in that newspaper and I will soon tell it for Opinión 51), Diorama de la Cultura, México en la Cultura, Últimas Noticias Segunda Edición, Novedades, in the magazine Cine, Cinema Reporter, Diario Fílmico, Revista Derby, Contenido, Revista de Revistas, Celuloide, and many others that are lost in the annals of the history of untold and unwritten female journalism... in which she charged between 50 and 100 pesos per publication!
He rubbed shoulders with the cream of male journalism such as Enrique Ramírez y Ramírez, Mario Ezcurdia, Fernando Benitez, Luis Spota, with Renato Leduc, the one who wrote: "wise virtue of knowing the time; to love in time and untie in time; as the saying goes: give time to time...". ".
Allied in her own way with the great women pioneers of journalism in Mexico, such as Magdalena Mondragón and Ana Salado, she continued to be an ally of those who preceded her, such as Bambi, Rosa María Campos, and many others.
In the 30's and 40's he was a subject of great interest for the Secret Police, for the Confidential Department of the SEGOB and for the Political Information Office, due to his personal relationship with Alberto Manrique Páramo, a Colombian exiled in Mexico, who had been in his homeland, director of La Gaceta Republicana, the leftist newspaper from where he harangued the workers to demonstrate against the importation of military uniforms; historical fact that derived in the so called The Tailors' Massacre and, later, for his sympathy and links with Mexican communism, and with the Chinese and Cuban governments.
She was a foot reporter, article writer, columnist, information chief, editor and writer. Her first interview was with the first Tarahumara municipal president of Batopilas, Chihuahua and was published in Hoy, in two parts, April 15 and 16, 1939.
As she confessed to Noemí Atamoros (Interview, Excélsior, Section B, 1972) she made a promise to herself that from that moment on nothing and no one would separate her from her journalistic career.
"I survived the three most difficult journalistic directors," Rosa Castro always said.
He was referring to Pagés LLergo (of the magazines Hoy and SIEMPRE!); Fernando Benítez (Mexico en la Cultura supplement of Novedades); and Manuel Becerra Acosta (Excélsior).
"The three of them filled my soul with pebbles, but they published me, which at the end of the day was what I was interested in."
"Pagés LLergo is a born journalist. Tough as nails, he says he has been my 'bogeyman' but he has never been able to beat me. He knows how to appreciate work and honesty, very important virtues in a journalist.
Fernando is very difficult, but he is a great journalist. He used to tell me "every year you get mad at me and you leave, but you come back"; that's how it was....
Becerra Acosta, my God, what a case! He shouted and imposed terribly. Once or once in a while he treated me kindly."
His columns Genio y Figuras in Excélsior and Galería del mundo in El Día were widely read for the sharpness and intelligence of their contents, almost always related to culture and its exponents. They were published for more than 10 years.
He wrote three books, published by Fondo de Cultura Económica, FCE, which today would be authentic best sellers:
Beware of eating, a report on unhealthy eating and the diseases it causes; The human explosion, with hard data, in 1974 more than 50% of women did not use a contraceptive method correctly or abandoned it; and, Los fracasos escolares, a study-report revealing the causes of school dropouts, inefficient teaching and the ineptitude of the State. Testimonies written 50 years ago! And it all sounds soooo familiar...
Many of his reports and chronicles are true guides to good journalism.
Cartas del Sureste (it was a serialized report, not a book), La religión con 4 siglos de historia en México, La responsabilidad del Escritor, Epístolas a Fernando Benítez, his splendid travel chronicles to Japan, China, Cuba...the biography in 15 chapters, in Hoy, Sobre la ruta de Carrillo Puerto, el Mesías del Motul.
He conducted an encyclopedic survey of all activities in Mexico during 50 years in politics, journalism, criticism, industry, which was published for 15 months, the only one of its kind.
The interviews with artists, painters, literary muralists and politicians, such as the exclusive interview with Marshal Chen-Li, Minister of the Interior in People's China; the chronicles from Cuba and the conversation with Gabriel García Márquez as soon as he published One Hundred Years of Solitude , which can be found on the Internet thanks to the republication made by the magazine Proceso:
... Enough! This novelist García Márquez, this poet of the mad literary madness (which is so lacking in our literature), may well be right to call his book One Hundred Years of Solitude, because all those inhabitants of Macondo, those Arcadios and Aurelianos I, II and III, all of them mad with mad madness in the creation of their lives, were as many alienated poets in various forms and scales, and what poet is there who does not carry the heartbreaking feeling of a great loneliness?
Solitude that accompanied the Rosa journalist, the Rosa writer, the Rosa actress. Also the woman. To that Rosa who sought through therapies to find her course and drop anchor in a safe harbor. To leave behind the demons of anguish and anxiety. Because as the psychiatrist told the family, -Rosacannot contain herself.
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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