On a day like today (April 21) 61 years ago, he disappeared as a guerrilla fighter in the jungle of Salta, Argentina, his country of origin, at the age of 34, but his short life was intense as a fighter, especially seeking to let the world know the truth about the young and threatened Cuban Revolution.

With experience in several Argentine media, he met in Buenos Aires -where he was born on May 31, 1929- a group of Cuban exiles and, in 1958, he was among the first journalists to clandestinely interview rebel leaders in the Sierra Maestra to clarify the objectives of the struggle against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, which was supported by the United States.

As a result of that journalistic work, which he shared with his combat rifle, he published his book Los que luchan y los que lloran (Those who fight and those who cry), which gathers early testimonial articles on the Cuban liberation process.

In a historic speech that Prensa Latina treasures in its archives, in October 1960 ( shortly after more than a year and a half of founding the news agency), he recalled: “As a war correspondent we saw fighting in the mountains of Cuba, although with great courage of the combatants, almost without weapons, and we saw instead the Cuban farmers being massacred with American grapeshot”.

We saw Cuban students falling in the cities with American shrapnel.

We, war correspondents in front of the struggle, prepared our reports to let the reader know a people that wanted to liberate itself, strafed by the bombs and shrapnel of the greatest imperialist power on earth, he added.

Invited to Cuba by Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara immediately after the triumph of January 1, 1959, he took part in the complex organization of “Operation Truth”, which summoned about 400 foreign journalists to Havana for two days to let them know about the reality of the country in the face of smear campaigns by Washington and its main media.

During the war they fought the Cuban people with grapeshot and bombs; when the war ended, they fought and continue to fight the Cuban Revolution with false news, Masetti continued, stressing the need to create their own agency capable of breaking the U.S. monopoly on public opinion.

Thus, on June 16, 1959, Prensa Latina was born, and he assumed its direction at the age of 30.

Even before the creation of our agency, the slanderous attacks began directly from the U.S. State Department. We were attacked in every way, he said.

Being a small agency, being minimal what we can do, reaching the people of Latin America where the big newspapers are controlled by the monopolies such as the big radio and television companies, being our task minimal, what has been done against us is enormous, because of all the power of the U.S. propaganda, he denounced after 18 months of activity.

But it was not because we were simply a small news agency, it was because we were a revolutionary agency.

That, just as we have made the revolution in our people, we, the Latin American revolutionary journalists, wanted to revolutionize journalistic environment in a very simple, very clear way, with nothing more than the truth, Masetti insisted.

In that II International Meeting of Journalists, held in Baden, Austria, in October 1960, he maintained that “the journalist must be objective, (but) not impartial, he has no right to be impartial, because no decent person can be impartial between good and evil, between war and peace”.

Before the international journalists, Masetti presented dozens of proofs of the pressure Washington exerted on newspaper editors so that they would not hire Prensa Latina’s news services.

In a little more than a year at the head of the agency -which will soon celebrate 66 years of uninterrupted work-, Masetti had to travel frequently, seeking equipment, exchange agreements and personnel.

During that period, the agency managed to open 16 correspondent offices in Latin America and other parts of the world, which were immediately harassed, often by means of violence.

According to one of his Argentine passports, recently recovered, in 1959 he traveled from Havana to Mexico (twice), Argentina, United Arab Republic (Egypt), Italy, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, as well as to New York and Miami, United States.

In 1960, he traveled to Argentina and made six brief visits to the United States (New York, Miami and New Orleans), all in order to consolidate the technical and communicational functioning of Prensa Latina.

“We had problems with practically all the Latin American governments,” he said and listed the arrests and expulsions of correspondents, as well as the closure of correspondents’ offices in several countries, besides maneuvers by the Inter-American Press Association against the young agency.

Masetti also warned international journalists that it was not only about closing Prensa Latina, but also about invading and crushing the Cuban Revolution: “One of the things that worries me the most is that the world does not find out that Cuba is going to be invaded, that Cuba is going to be attacked.

They are going to invent any lie, they are going to resort to any subterfuge, so that the aggression they are going to carry out against Cuba will go unnoticed”.

He thus referred to the preparations for the imminent mercenary invasion of Playa Girón, defeated in a few hours by the Cuban people, which Masetti covered as a war correspondent for Prensa Latina.

After the Cuban victory, in which he also participated as a militiaman, Masetti conducted -together with other journalists- interviews with captured war criminals.

The Argentinean journalist remained in the agency’s management until March 1961, to then assume a more risky position within the Revolution.

He wanted to deepen his military training to join the continental liberation struggle led by Commander Ernesto Che Guevara.

In October 1961, apparently using other passports, he traveled to Algeria to spend several months with the fighters of the Liberation Front of that North African country.

After its independence, Masetti returned there -in July 1962- on an official mission of the Cuban government.

At the end of that same year, under the war name of Comandante Segundo, he entered Salta, Argentina, as an advance guard of the Guevara guerrilla movement that was already operating in neighboring Bolivian Beni.

In the first months of 1964 his troops were harassed by Argentine Gendarmerie forces, causing casualties and arrests.

But Masetti was never captured. Nor were his remains ever found. He managed to get into the jungle, where he remains missing to this day.

There, the journalist, war correspondent and internationalist combatant continues to defend the truth about Cuba and Latin America.

abo/arb/JL