14ymedio, Madrid, February 5, 2024 — The poet and journalist Tania Díaz Castro passed away this Sunday in Havana, at the age of 84, according to Periódico Cubano, which does not specify the cause. The independent newspaper CubaNet, where she has worked since 1998, does not offer more details about the circumstances of her death.
Considered a pioneer of independent journalism on the Island, she was born in Camajuaní, Villa Clara, in 1939. Her father, José Felipe Díaz – a communist at the time of Gerardo Machado and an anti-communist after Fidel Castro came to power – was also a journalist. He worked at the National Library of Cuba and died in exile in New York.
This was not the case with Tania Díaz Castro, living in Havana, who at first embraced the Revolution. Founder of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) in 1961, and the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) in 1963, in those years she began to work as a reporter for different official media and published her first books. In the seventies, she also worked as a radio screenwriter.
However, at the end of the eighties, she began to oppose the Regime. She was part of the group that created the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1987, which would give rise, a little later, to the Party of
