Buenos Aires, June 7 (RHC) -- A book that includes the political commitment of three great Argentines who contributed to founding the Latin American news agency will be presented in the Argentine capital next Tuesday by the Octubre publishing house.

Written by journalist Mariana Seoane to pay tribute to journalist's day and close to the 61st anniversary of the agency on June 16, the work was completed in these difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic and will be released live on the website of the Página 12 newspaper.

The general editor of the Octubre group, Víctor Santa María, writer Hernán Vaca Narvaja, and Cuba’s Isidro Fardales, editor of the Cuban magazine Bohemia and former director of Radio Habana Cuba, will also be on hand in the presentation of the book, which includes photos from Prensa Latina.

‘Prensa Latina was created to fight lies and information operations of big news tanks in the United States and Europe,’  its author highlighted today in an interview with Página 12, in which she recalled that ‘the three most decisive figures in the establishment of the agency that gave a voice to revolutionary Cuba were Argentines.’

When asked about the experience of Prensa Latina for the history of journalism in Latin America, Seoane pointed out that it was the first time in Latin America that a government was willing to build an agency whose main objective was to spread truthfully what was happening in Cuba.

José Ricardo Masetti taught in the agency to be objective, truthful, that's why he said ‘we are objective but we are not impartial,’ because you cannot be impartial when choosing between good and evil. For them objectivity was to tell facts as they happened from the point of view of revolutionary experience, while big agencies were in line with US interests, she said.

For the author, the experience of Prensa Latina – set up at the time of the so-called Operación Verdad - is extraordinary because it is the first one, at least in the 20th century, established by a government that was preparing to fight for the veracity of information against the world's big information tanks.

Seaone highlighted that, when it was born, Prensa Latina ‘was a voice to rely on.’ To defending Prela, as the agency is also known, ‘was to defend Cuba's independence and autonomy to decide its own destiny in the 1960’s and 1970’s against the overwhelming advance of the United States as an imperial nucleus,’ she added. (With information from Prensa Latina)