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Argentinians to pay tribute to Prensa Latina founder

Buenos Aires, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) Argentine intellectuals, workers, and artists will pay tribute on Wednesday to Jorge Ricardo Masetti, 60 years after his death, founder of the Latin American News Agency, Prensa Latina.

The tribute will take place at the headquarters of the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBa) in this capital at 18:30 hours, local time.

General Secretary of the SiPreBa, Agustín Lecchi, Venceremos-Workers Party member Valeria Ianni, and Resumen Latinoamericano newspaper director Carlos Aznárez, among others, will attend the tribute.

Masetti was born in the city of Avellaneda in 1929. In addition to being one of the founders of Prensa Latina, he left a deep imprint in Argentina, Cuba, and Latin America.

He was a restless soul, prone to the mystical, preferably self-taught. At the age of 15, Masetti discovered journalism as an adventure, although he did not know it, as his destiny, researcher María Seoane (1948-2023) stated in her book “Che, Masetti, Waslh, Prensa Latina.”

He was a war chronicler who became the protagonist of a Revolution that marked the continent’s history with blood and fire. He stood out for his status as a founder of the only international news agency in Latin America that competed in its ground with the big information monopolies.

In 1958, Masetti became the first Argentine to arrive in the Sierra Maestra mountain range and interview Ernesto Guevara (1928-1967) and Fidel Castro (1926-2016) as a special envoy of Radio El Mundo.

From then on, his life was linked to Cuba, and a year later, after the rebels’ triumph, he summoned Rodolfo Walsh (1927-1977) to found, along with Che, a news agency at the service of truth, of which he would be its first director.

Then, Prensa Latina, a communication project of international scope with an alternative vision of the region’s reality, was founded on June 16, 1959.

Masetti’s values and dreams led him to carry out several missions and to go to the jungle of Oran to continue the guerrilla fight in that region bordering Bolivia, from which he was unable to leave.

jrr/iff/jha/gas

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