Cuban radio personality José Pardo Llada dies at 86
Matthew Kruk
Posted on Fri, Aug. 07, 2009
Cuban radio personality Jos� Pardo Llada dies at 86
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
El Nuevo Herald
Veteran journalist, politician and diplomat Jos� Pardo Llada, the most
influential radio commentator in pre-Fidel Castro Cuba, died Friday in a
hospital in Cali, Colombia due to complications from a stomach ulcer. He was
86.
``He was a man who made many people happy, with a great spirit of struggle
and a heart in which two entire countries could fit,'' said Bernadette
Pardo, his daughter, a journalist herself and a commentator on Miami's
Spanish-language radio station WQBA-1140 AM.
``He enjoyed life a lot, full of love and laughter, and he had a great sense
of history.''
Pardo Llada died at 9 a.m. at the Sebasti�n de Belalc�zar Clinic after his
stomach ulcer ailment was followed by pneumonia and kidney problems.
According to his relatives, his health deteriorated since Thursday, when he
spent his fifth day hospitalized in a coma.
RADIO LEGEND
His death marked the passing of a veritable legend in the history of Cuba's
radio and politics in the last century. He was also a prominent civic
personalty who left his imprint in the contemporaneous history of Colombia,
his adopted country.
Bernadette Pardo traveled Monday to Colombia and was able to be by her
father in his final moments. Pardo Llada had recently visited the family in
Miami, where he celebrated his birthday.
Born in 1923 in the Cuban city of Sagua la Grande, in the old province of
Las Villas, Pardo Llada attended a Jesuit school.
Years later, his father, a prominent teacher, sent him to Havana to study
law. He did not graduate and opted instead for radio journalism.
His name began to gain notoriety in 1944 as a result of a hurricane that
devastated Havana -- including several radio broadcast towers. Pardo Llada
worked at the time in a small station called CMK in Manzana de G�mez, across
from the Cuban capital's Central Park.
``He was on the radio talking for three days without stopping, drinking only
coffee with milk,'' recalled Cuban American journalist Max Lesnik in Miami.
``It was how he became famous and began inserting himself into the world of
politics, criticizing the government at the time.''
He attacked the government of Ram�n Grau which lasted from 1944 to 1948 and
in a short time his program, Peri�dico La Palabra, broadcast on Uni�n Radio,
drew an audience.
``It was the golden era of radio in Cuba and people gathered in the shops,
the coffeehouses and street corners to listen to his program at one in the
afternoon,'' recalled his childhood friend Pedro Y�nez.
``He was a guy with charisma, read voraciously and had a great sense of
humor, which helped his popularity, because in Cuba the only thing you
cannot be is boring.''
`THE VOICE'
Suddenly the most listened-to radio commentator on the island, Pardo Llada
went after government corruption, calling himself a ``voice without price or
fear.'' He generally improvised his editorial commentaries and concluded
them with a phrase that became emblematic for his listeners at the time:
``Gentlemen, what a screw-up!''
At the time he also worked as a columnist for the Cuban news weekly Bohemia
and the leading newspaper Diario Nacional.
It was then that his political aspirations emerged under fiery leader
Eduardo Chib�s. Pardo Llada won public support as a member of the Cuban
House of Representatives in the 1950 elections.
Pardo Llada's friendship with the then-young lawyer, Fidel Castro,
strengthened in the 1950s. Castro visited the home of Pardo Llada and his
wife Mar�a Luisa Alonso in the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado almost
daily. It was during one visit, while awaiting Pardo Llada's arrival, that
Castro had to drive Alonso to the hospital when she gave birth to
Bernadette.
After Fulgencio Batista's coup in 1952, his radio program was suspended 42
times and Pardo Llada was arrested many times. He later joined the
guerrillas led by Fidel Castro.
But in 1961 he defected in Mexico, expressing disappointment with Castro's
turn to communism.
After his asylum request was rejected in Mexico and Spain, Pardo Llada
traveled to Colombia and settled in Cali in 1963. In Colombia, he wrote for
the magazine Cromos, directed the Cali newspaper Occidente and worked for
the leading Bogot� daily El Tiempo.
He also served as Colombia's ambassador to Norway and the Dominican
Republic.
Besides Bernadette, Pardo Llada is survived by his second wife, Elsy
Calder�n, a son, Jos� Pardo Kroneman. His first wife, Mar�a Luisa, died in
1980. Funeral services will take place 1 p.m. Saturday at the Church of San
Fernando of Cali. Burial will be in Colombia, though his last will was that
his remains be reburied in Cuba.