By Jorge Luna

On 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, especially seeking to make the world know the truth about the young and threatened Cuban Revolution.
With experience in various Argentine media outlets, he met a group of Cuban exiles in Buenos Aires -where he was born on May 31, 1929- and, in 1958, was among the first journalists to secretly interview rebel leaders in the Sierra Maestra to clarify the objectives of the struggle against the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, which had US support.
As a result of this journalistic work, which he shared with his combat rifle, he published his book Those Who Fight and Those Who Cry, which gathers early chronicles of the Cuban liberation process.
In a historic speech that Prensa Latina treasures in its archives, in October 1960 (just over a year and a half after founding the news agency), he recalled: “As a war correspondent, we saw fighting in the mountains of Cuba, although with great courage on the part of the combatants, almost without weapons, and instead we saw Cuban peasants being massacred with American machine guns.”
We saw Cuban students falling in the cities under American shrapnel. We, war correspondents on the front lines of the struggle, prepared our reports to show the reader a people who wanted to liberate themselves, bombarded by the bombs and shrapnel of the greatest imperialist power on earth, he added.
Invited to Cuba by Commander Ernesto Che Guevara immediately after the victory of January 1, 1959, he participated in the complex organization of «Operation Truth,» which brought together some 400 foreign journalists for two days in Havana to learn about the country’s reality in the face of smear campaigns by Washington and its main media outlets.
During the war, they fought the Cuban people with machine guns and bombs; when the war ended, they fought and continue to fight the Cuban Revolution with fake news, Masetti continued, emphasizing the need to create its own agency capable of breaking the US monopoly on public opinion.
Thus, Prensa Latina emerged on June 16, 1959, and he took over the leadership at the age of 30. Even before we founded our agency, the slander began directly from the US State Department. «We were attacked in every way,» he maintained.
As a small agency, with whatever minimum we can do, reaching the people of Latin America where the major newspapers are controlled by monopolies like the major radio and television companies, with our task being minimal, what has been done against us is enormous, due to the full power of American propaganda, he denounced after 18 months of activity.
But it wasn’t just because we were a small news agency; it was because we were a revolutionary agency. Just as we have made a revolution in our own country, we, the revolutionary journalists of Latin America, wanted to revolutionize the Latin American journalistic environment in a very simple, very clear way, with nothing but the truth, Masetti insisted.
At the Second 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 one decent can be impartial between good and evil, between war and peace.”
Masetti presented the international journalists with dozens of pieces of evidence demonstrating the pressure Washington exerted on newspaper editors to discourage Prensa Latina’s news services.
In just over a year at the helm of the agency -which will soon celebrate 66 years of uninterrupted work- Masetti had to travel frequently, procuring equipment, exchange agreements, and personnel. During that period, the agency managed to open 16 offices in Latin America and other parts of the world, which were immediately attacked, often through violence.
According to one of his recently recovered Argentine passports, in 1959 he traveled from Havana to Mexico (twice), Argentina, the 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 aimed at consolidating the technical and communications operations of Prensa Latina.
«We’ve had problems with virtually every government in Latin America,» he said, listing the arrests and expulsions of correspondents, as well as the closure of offices in several capitals, in addition to maneuvers by the Inter-American Press Association against the fledgling agency.
Masetti also warned international journalists that this wasn’t just about shutting down Prensa Latina, but about invading and crushing the Cuban Revolution: «One of the things that worries me most is that the world doesn’t realize that Cuba is going to be invaded, that Cuba is going to be attacked. They’re going to invent any lie, they’re going to resort to any subterfuge, so that the aggression they’re going to carry out against Cuba goes unnoticed.»
He referred to the preparations for the imminent mercenary invasion at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), which was defeated in just a few hours by the Cuban people and which Masetti covered as a war correspondent for Prensa Latina.
Following the Cuban victory, in which he also participated as a militiaman, Masetti -along with other journalists- conducted interviews with some of the captured war criminals.
The Argentine journalist remained at the agency’s helm until March 1961, before taking on a higher-risk position within the Revolution. He wanted to further 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 combatants of that North African country´s Liberation Front. After Algeria´s independence, Masetti returned there -in July 1962- on an official mission for the Cuban government.
At the end of that year, under the nom de guerre Comandante Segundo, he entered Salta, Argentina, as an advance party for the Guevarist guerrillas already operating in neighboring Beni, Bolivia. During the first months of 1964, his troops were harassed by Argentine Gendarmerie forces, resulting in casualties and arrests.
But Masetti was never captured. Nor were his remains ever found. He managed to escape into the jungle, where he remains missing to this day.
There, the journalist, war correspondent and internationalist fighter continues to defend the truth of Cuba and Latin America.