By Earl Bousquet

Prensa Latina has for six decades been leading the coverage of and in Latin America and the Caribbean, as seen in its increased levels of coverage of recent developments in and concerning member-states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), like: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

To reverse the growing trend, the new imperial invaders are using new cyber weapons to try to permanently paralyze Prensa Latina.

But Cuba’s response was to mobilize its own resources to quickly rearm and return to the information battlefield, with stronger defense mechanisms.

Today’s constantly-evolving electronic sophistry of psychological warfare ensures that no new software anywhere will ever be eternally impregnable.

The hack attack on Prensa Latina also underlined the truth in Che Guevara’s maxim of ‘Constant Vigilance and Mistrust’, especially when dealing with sworn enemies.

Prensa Latina will have resolved to be on greater guard for everlasting efforts to silence it by killing its words, images and voices.

Born in the bowels of the Revolution, it’s been led, over the past six-decades-plus, by revolutionaries who fought and covered liberation wars in Cuba and other Lattin American nations -and their proud 21st Century heirs and successors.

The mid-March hack was no accident, most-likely a direct response to Prensa Latina’s growing global influence and its mobilization last January of dozens of representatives of media houses and news agencies from over 30 nations to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the original ‘Operation Truth’, where delegates also discussed a collective response by the media in the South -and their allies in the North- to the growing loss of traditional media credibility.

Participants in the January 20-21 Havana conference expressed support for a new international ‘Operation Truth’ like that launched in 1959 to repel the international negative information onslaught against the triumphant Cuban Revolution.

Prensa Latina was born out of being tasked by Commander Fidel Castro to tell and share the truths to beat-back the lies propagated against the island after the January 1, 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

The Havana gathering discussed urging news agencies and journalists everywhere today to commit to ensuring that truth and honesty underlie their coverage and dissemination of news.

Participants pointed to the killing of over-100 mainly Arab journalists in less than 100 days in Gaza (at the time) and the continuing restricted reporting on Israel’s terror in Gaza that had taken over 24,000 lives of mainly women and children.

Some also pointed to one-sided, forked-tongue and analyses of the Ukraine War that shamelessly try to erase history and turn reality on its head.

But such efforts also continue to fail, as today’s alternative media instruments allow agencies committed to eternal truth everywhere to gain equal access, through ever-evolving social and alternative media platforms, to audiences no longer dominated by the traditional monopoly mainstream international media.

The US government spends millions annually, through various agencies to try to influence how the world sees everything -from its never-ending economic, commercial, military and tech wars with China, to its ongoing efforts to engineer the reversal of Russia’s progress under President Vladimir Putin.

There have been countless exposures by Prensa Latina and other international news agencies committed to truthful reporting, of examples of the expansive and expensive efforts taken to ensure the world sees itself through American eyes.

The same migraine Cold War hangover that drives US, European Union (EU) and NATO approaches to China and Russia today is also behind the cyber-attack on Prensa Latina.

But like with the US-led Ukraine war sanctions imposed on Russia, the Prensa Latina attack had the reverse effect: of more-than-doubly strengthening Cuba’s overall response mechanisms.  

Cuba also recently hosted another gathering that ruffled the feathers of the balding American Eagle: a February meeting of global left publishers and broadcasters, where host President Miguel Diaz Canel invited them to take-up Prensa Latina’s call for a new ‘Operation Truth’.     

Media agencies defending death and destruction with lies and distortions are finding it more difficult to concoct believable stories to justify killing, maiming, starving and otherwise obliterating innocent civilians by thousands in Gaza.

As the published figures confirmed, more people the-world-over have been tuning-in directly to Prensa Latina’s online platforms, as more people seeking truth lose faith in the traditional sources and increasingly rely on new and alternative media for more-reliable information.

Other regional and continental voices of Latin America beaming from The South also attract the wrath of modern American gladiators.

The Head of the US Southern Command identified the also-growing Venezuela-based Telesur television channel among those seen by Washington as challenging the continuing militarization and dominance of information flow in Latin America and the Caribbean by the USA and powerful American multinational agencies.    

The hack attack on Prensa Latina drew strong condemnation from near and far, but progress in the fightback will require ongoing actions to reduce The South’s dependence on The North and the traditional global communication mechanisms driven by private and state-owned media entities with directly-opposing interests.

The Global South must accelerate efforts to lessen this dependence by increasing cooperation in generating and sharing information for regional, continental and global audiences, from new and old, similar and different perspectives.

Journalists bravely covering Gaza for Arab-based agencies like Al Mayadeen and Al Jazeera also continue to be targeted and killed by Israeli drones.    But Truth is always impregnable and has never remained hidden forever, which is why a new ‘Operation Truth’ is not only desirable but necessary -and sooner than later.