«He let out his first iron voices, frenetic, angry, virile, proletarian. Sour bread was earned by pounding on a flaming anvil. He was a blacksmith » ^[1] . This is how Raúl Roa defined his close friend Regino Pedroso , and defined him as the first working-class poet.

Pedroso cultivated friendship with great intellectuals such as Andrés Núñez Olano , Rubén Martínez Villena —who noted the quality of his literary fiber—; Pablo de la Torriente Brau , José Antonio Fernández de Castro , Félix Pita Rodríguez , Enrique Serpa , Loló de la Torriente and Nicolás Guillén were also very close to him .

His intellectual trajectory led to the fact that on May 25, 1972, the cycle "Life and Work of Cuban Poets" —a space of excellence carried out by the José Martí National Library of Cuba — was dedicated to Regino Pedroso . It was, according to Salvador Bueno in the guest's presentation, "a tribute that Cuban culture owed to one of its fundamental artists, to one of the creators of the most singular weight and dimension of national literature ^[2] " .

Friends and those present at the meeting, in addition to highlighting the quality of his work and his performance, highlighted the youthful image projected by the poet. Regarding this particular attribute, to the point of playing a joke, Roa said: «the more leaves of the almanac fall on top of Regino Pedroso, the more he becomes resolutely towards youth […] In his adolescence he gave a recital, in two voices, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda ^[3] ».

Regarding the freshness of the honoree, our National Poet raised his voice with the following verses:

Regino

I do not have to keep track of your life by
consulting the hourglass and calendar,
nor with domineering or notary glasses to
decide whether there are 8 or 80.
[…]

Age should never be taken into account,
nor should the calendar be taken seriously,
which is a useless rose that does not count ^[4] .

The José Martí National Library Magazine published the entertainment, given by personalities who were at the meeting and others who justified their absence. Raúl Roa, Loló de la Torriente , Roberto Fernández Retamar , Raimundo Lazo , Luis Marré , Ángel Augier , José Antonio Portuondo , Félix Pita Rodríguez and Nicolás Guillén recalled the times when they met Regino and expressed their admiration for the town's poet.

On a second occasion, at the end of March 1976, the National Library paid another recognition to Regino, this time on the occasion of the celebration of his eightieth birthday. The anniversary was joined by the presentation of the book Obra poética. Regino Pedroso and the new Cuban poetry , with a foreword by Félix Pita Rodríguez , published a year earlier by the publishing house Arte y Literatura . Officials of the Cuban Book Institute , and again the presence of the Chancellor of dignity , honored the intellectual with a semblance and character of eternal youth.

Regino Pedroso Aldama was born on March 3, 1896. A considerable number of official Cuban sources record his birth on April 5 of that year, the date that coincides with his official registration. Regino's own testimony brings us precisely closer to the day he opened his eyes to the world, a just remembrance with which we pay tribute on the 125th anniversary of his birth:

Why and for what was I born? They say that those were the first words I spoke on the night of March 3, 1896 in the town of Unión de Reyes, Matanzas province, when I opened my eyes to the world. As no one paid any attention to me, or did not know how to answer me, they told me that I raged, cried and kicked in such a way and for so long, that after the deadline for my registration had elapsed, it had to be deferred, and the of April 5 of the mentioned year. I could do nothing ^[5] .

In 1907 his father died, a situation that accelerated the interruption of his studies to work as a carpenter's apprentice; later in agricultural work in sugarcane fields during the harvest, in a steel construction company and in the railway workshops of Luyanó.

In the twenties he began to publish his poems of social content, in which he expressed his experiences as a worker. His lyrics became the voice of the exploited:

Violent tension of muscular effort. Tongue of steel, the mandarrias
rehearse stridentist poems
from avant-garde literature on the anvils .
[…] They are your children, the sad ones,
who in anguish work, work, work
in a fertile effort of muscles and nerves;
but sterile to the dream of libertarian deeds.

The previous verses correspond to the poem "Fraternal Salutation to the mechanical workshop", which were published in the Literary Supplement of the Diario de la Marina , in October 1927. A study by Rubén Martínez Villena accompanied the publication . In the opinion of the poet María Villar Buceta , «his fraternal greeting…. he has laid the first stone of a new poetry in Cuba ^[6] ».

Committed to revolutionary causes, Pedroso suffered six months in prison at the Castillo del Príncipe . It was March 1935, and along with other editors of Masas magazine, he was accused of seditious propaganda. However, his contributions to the main newspapers of the republic did not prevent his anti-imperialist thinking and his communist convictions from being strengthened.

In 1939 he won the National Poetry Prize thanks to his book Beyond sings the sea . In 1933 he had published the collection of poems Nos , and years later they would see the light Poetic Anthology (1918-1938). Bolívar: symphony of freedom (1945); and The Plum by Yuan Pei Fu. Chinese poems (1955).

A little known fact is its link with libraries and archives. In 1940 he was appointed librarian of the José Martí Sports Youth Park. Two years later he participated as a delegate to the First International Congress of Archivists, Librarians and Conservators of Museums of the Caribbean, held in Havana, while occupying a position in the Directorate of Culture of the Ministry of Education . In that place he was surprised by the triumph of the Revolution, a horizon that offered him the possibility of developing in the diplomatic universe as Cultural Counselor of Cuba in Mexico and later in the People's Republic of China.

In the introduction to the book Anthology of Cosmic Poetry by Regino Pedroso (Mexico, 2004), the intellectual Salvador Bueno evokes it with deep admiration:

This is how we remember him, fine and cordial, the usual Regino Pedroso, Chinese and mulatto of our mestizo land, with a permanently youthful spirit despite the years that accumulate over his life. Without a doubt, an unforgettable character for all who knew him, loved him and admired him.

Grades.

1. Raúl Roa. "To Regino." In: Journal of the José Martí National Library , Year 63, Vol. XlV, n. 3, Sep-Dec 1972, p. 36.
2. Salvador Good. Ob. cit., p. 33
3. Raúl Roa. Ob. cit., p. 38.
4. Nicolás Guillén. Ob. cit., pp 50.51
5. Regino Pedroso. "Life and dreams." In: Journal of the José Martí National Library , Year 63, Vol. XlV, n. 3, Sep-Dec 1972, p. 55.
6. Ibid., P. 69.

The José Martí National Library of Cuba, on its 120th anniversary, together with the Cubaliteraria electronic publishing house and the Cuban Observatory of Book and Reading, support the actions of the National Program for Reading by disseminating significant works and authors of Cuban and universal literature, that the reader can find among the historical collections of this institution. In the same way, interesting facts about our literary events and milestones of Cuban culture can be learned.