Guantánamo – The announcer Rubén Lobaina Rodríguez, known as the Voice of Time, passed away this Wednesday, January 23, in the city of Guantánamo. He was a media professional at the CMKS Provincial Radio Station. During his career, he received numerous awards, including the Radio Microphone Award, the 90th Anniversary of Cuban Radio Seal, the Voice and Dream Award, and the Guamo Prize, awarded by the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) and the provincial committee of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), respectively.
Lobaina, or “El Lobo” (The Wolf), as he was affectionately known by all his colleagues at radio stations in Cuba’s easternmost region, briefly recounted in one of his interviews the most significant moments in his life as a radio announcer.
According to his own account, he was born on May 30, 1944, in Maisí, formerly demarcation of the Baracoa region. He loved radio from a young age. Fortunately, his humble family in that rural community had an old radio, on which he listened to stations of that epoch, such as Radio Cadena Azul and CNC, even broadcasting from Santo Domingo, and he was a devoted fan of those announcers.
When he moved with his family to the town of Guantanamo, he learned, through a friend, about a annoucer course at the radio station, which at that time was located on the Carretera Street between San Lino and Santa Rita.
There, he was welcomed by the late announcer Wilminton Rodríguez, who from that first day trusted Lobo, giving him the opportunity to live broadcast a news report about the Federation of Cuban Women and the station’s station identification, which from then on became the iconic voice of CMKS.
