Havana, June 5 (RHC)-- The renowned Cuban journalist and art critic Pedro de la Hoz died this Wednesday at the age of 71, according to a note from the Granma newspaper.

Starting in 1988, he began working in the aforementioned media outlet and immediately moved to the Culture editorial office, then led by journalist Rolando Pérez Betancourt, whom he replaced in the position and remained for 11 years.

He considered Granma his second home. Without abandoning his work in the newspaper, he was an advisor to Armando Hart in the early years of the nineties, and the first director of the magazine Artecubano, of the National Council of Plastic Arts.

He was part of the chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity, participated in forums held in Rome, Caracas, San Salvador de Bahía and Sao Paulo.

De la Hoz, José Martí National Journalism Award winner, served as vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), a position he held since the organization's VIII Congress.

Born in 1953 in Cienfuegos and graduated in Journalism from the University of Havana, in 1976, he returned to his native province being one of the founders of the newspaper 5 de Septiembre, in which he covered economic content.

He later worked at the newspaper Vanguardia, from the central province of Villa Clara, and there he founded the cultural supplement Huellas.

With a very intense journalistic production, music, shows, television and, in general, cultural policy issues figured in his acute critical exercise.

He was the author of the books Africa in the Cuban Revolution, 2004, Como el primer día, 2009, as well as Durban, ten years later, 2011, Hotel Nacional de Cuba, revelations of a legend, among other publications and texts.

The most recent of his publications is Fidel and Mandela, by Ediciones Ocean Sur, 2022.

Among other recognitions, he received the José Antonio Fernández de Castro National Prize for Cultural Journalism (1999) and the Jorge Enrique Mendoza Written Press Prize (2009).

Upon being named Youth Teacher, in his words of gratitude Pedro expressed: «Teacher is a great word. Aside from the curricular demands and protocol routines, teaching is earned to the extent that a man or woman is capable of leaving fruitful traces on their peers.

"It is not restricted to the classroom or the formal lesson, nor to the methodological opinions nor the didactic regulation," he noted.