site.btaBTA Archives Reveal Name of Bulgarian Journalist Who Spoke with Che Guevara

The archives of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) have helped answer the question of which Bulgarian journalist met and spoke with one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara, in Havana in 1960, Assoc. Prof. Boris Naimushin, Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at New Bulgarian University, told BTA.

This was Stela Avishai, former Deputy Director General of BTA and the agency’s correspondent in New York, US. The discovery was made thanks to the research efforts of Assoc. Prof. Boris Naimushin, with the assistance of BTA, as reported in an article by Maria Pachkova published on the website of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists.

MYSTERY SOLVED

Desislava Sevova, Head of BTA’s Archives and Reference Directorate, explained that Assoc. Prof. Naimushin had been working for some time on a study about interpreters who translated at official meetings of Bulgarian communist leader Todor Zhivkov, which led him to Stela Avishai, who interpreted for Zhivkov during his 1960 meeting with Che Guevara. “I had found collections of materials from BTA correspondents in the attic of our archive, where I had read about Stela Avishai speaking about her stay in Cuba and other interesting details. I also found a small volume containing letters she wrote during her time in Cuba, along with newspaper clippings about the meeting. I gave these to him [Naimushin], and they proved to be extremely useful,” Sevova recalled.

Naimushin shared that he has a long-standing connection with BTA. “I’ve had a long, long history with BTA for several years now, because of my work on diplomatic translation. At one point, I found photos on the Associated Press website and realized that many of them could be obtained through BTA. That’s how I got in touch with Nikolay Nikolov, Deputy Director of the Communication, Coordination and Cooperation Directorate at BTA, and began digging through folders to find various materials,” he explained.

Later, Naimushin came across an article by journalist Kadrinka Kadrinova, who had tried to identify the Bulgarian journalist who spoke with Che Guevara. The piece noted that the Cuban could not remember her name but recalled she was a BTA deputy director general.

“For me, it was simple – I called Nikolay, and within 10 minutes he told me that in 1960, Stela Avishai was among the deputy director generals. I found her biography, and then Nikolay connected me with Desislava Sevova, who helped me locate some texts. She dug through the archives and found a folder containing Avishai’s handwritten reports and newspaper clippings,” Naimushin said.

He added that he has already marked more photos from the 1960s that he wants to examine and intends to continue working in BTA’s large archival collections.

“My entire team and I are extremely grateful to BTA. I am very pleased with the attention and support I received, Nikolay always welcomed me, and he introduced me to Desislava, who has been incredibly kind and helpful,” Naimushin said.

THE BACKSTORY

The story of the Bulgarian journalist who met Che Guevara in Havana in 1960 had long remained a mystery. In 2019, Cuban journalist Roberto Molina brought archival photos of the event to Sofia, but no one was able to identify the woman in the pictures. On June 19 of that year, Kadrinka Kadrinova, then chair of the Association of Spanish-Speaking Journalists in Bulgaria and now a member of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM), published a report titled “Who Is the Bulgarian Journalist Who Spoke with Che Guevara in 1960?”, Pachkova recalls in her article.

The report noted that then BTA Director Maxim Minchev had pledged that, once the BTA archives were digitized, the agency would help reveal her identity. However, the pandemic and Minchev’s passing delayed the effort. The answer finally came in 2025, thanks to the research of Assoc. Prof. Boris Naimushin, who while working with the BTA archives and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, established that the journalist was Stela Avishai (1923-2013), a veteran journalist, BTA’s first correspondent in the United States, and at the time, BTA Deputy Director General.

Archival documents confirm that Avishai attended an international conference of news agencies in Havana in January 1960, where she spoke with both Che Guevara and Jorge Masetti, director of the newly established Prensa Latina. Her daughter, Viza Nedyalkova, said that her mother had an entire album of photos from her visit to Cuba, including those brought to Sofia in 2019 by Ricardo Molina, Pachkova notes.

“Deeply moved that the ‘mystery’ has finally been solved, Kadrinka Kadrinova informed Roberto Molina, who had by then returned to live in his native Havana. He replied: “A thousand thanks! Victory belongs to those who persist, says Jose Marti. You showed persistence and won. The moment you told me the name of this BTA leader, it immediately came back to me. That was exactly the name she told me when we met at the UN in New York. Please convey my warmest greetings to her daughter. I regret that I cannot immediately fly to my beloved Sofia, to give her a hug, a kiss, and try to speak to her in my poor Bulgarian,” Pachkova’s article concludes.