Caracas – The 75th anniversary of Tribuna Popular, the press organ of the Central Committee of the “Red Rooster” Party, was celebrated on February 17 with a warm gathering of members of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and friends. Among the attendees were prominent figures of Venezuelan journalism, such as Walter Martínez and Manuel Isidro Molina, who gathered in the lobby of the Cantaclaro Theater, in the PCV headquarters building in Caracas, to toast the dean newspaper of the workers’ press in the country.
Also in attendance was journalist and editor Hernán Carrera, son of the late communist leader and director of Tribuna Popular (1999-2002) Jerónimo Carrera, who recalled his first newspaper sale at the age of six, and his work at the age of nine with the printing press sent from Germany. Photojournalists of the stature of Orlando Ugueto also shared their experience of training in this newspaper, which they described as their first school.
Within the messages of greetings that arrived was that of the well-known oil economist Carlos Mendoza Potellá, who recalled his experiences as a reporter of Tribuna Popular at the gates of the former National Congress, and also as a typographer of the PCV’s organ. For his part, Miguel Salazar referred to his internship as a reporter at the end of the 1980s, and the well-known popular communicator Oswaldo «Mango» Rivero described this newspaper as «the first communicational guerrilla» of the country.
In addition, a dozen communist newspapers of the world sent their greetings on the occasion of this 75th anniversary, between them Avante! (of the Portuguese Communist Party), Gazeta Pravda (of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) and Communist Initiative (of the Communist Refoundation Pole in France); as did the Communist Party of the United States and the Workers Party of Ireland.
«We are sure that Tribuna Popular will continue to fulfill its work as a revolutionary newspaper, and in the face of the redoubled attack of the bourgeois government of Nicolás Maduro against the PCV, Tribuna Popular will be a weapon of denunciation,» declared El Machete, newspaper of the Communist Party of Mexico; while the director of Nuevo Rumbo (of the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain) assured: «If the censorship, repression and boycott that your organ of expression has suffered in seventy-five years have not silenced the historic Gallo Rojo, neither will the current order of things.»
The editor of Peoples Voice, organ of the Communist Party of Canada, noted that «the communists of Canada rely on Tribuna Popular for a clear and complete analysis of the struggle in Venezuela». For her part, the editor-in-chief of Unsere Zeit (of the German Communist Party) declared that «Global media corporations strive to control public opinion, but as long as publications like Tribuna Popular exist, they will not succeed».
Tribuna Popular 