Manuel de Dios Unanue was born on January 4th, 1943. He was born in Cuba and was also a veteran. Unanue was a journalist and the former editor-in-chief of the largest Spanish newspaper in the United States El Diario la Prensa which was in New York City. He was also a radio show host, and an anti-drug crusading editor for magazines such as Crimen and Cambio XXI.
As mentioned before, Manuel de Dios Unanue was born in Camaguey, Cuba. His family went into voluntary exile after the Castro regime took over Cuba. They first went to Spain and then went to Puerto Rico. As far as education went, Unanue received his M.S. in Criminology from the Inter-American University in Puerto Rico. He then moved to New York in 1973.
His degree in Criminology helped him obtain a job in the Hispanic Criminal Justice Task Force. In 1977, he joined El Diario la Prensa. Manuel quickly worked his way up in the paper starting as a reporter, then a columnist and eventually editor-in-chief. Some of his higher-ups started disliking him a bit because his coverage of the city of New York was very unflattering, and they ended up firing him.
These journalists and politicians tried to silence a Cuban, but he did not shut up. After leaving the paper he started working at a radio show where he was the main host. On air he publicly criticized different drug lords and used their names. He even published a book named The Secret of the Medellin Cartel. Colleagues of his say that he was the most prominent journalist to expose drug lords and their actions.
On March 11, 1992 Manuel de Dios Unanue was murdered while sitting at a bar called Meson Asturias Restaurant located in Queens, New York. An unknown person, at that time, approached him and shot him twice in the head. Investigations revealed that the murderer was Wilson Alejandro-Mejia Velez, an illegal alien that worked at a chair factory in Staten Island. The reward to find this man was originally $10,000 but that number skyrocketed to $70,000 by the help of other journalists that were colleagues of Unanue's. Jose Mena was charged with ordering the murder of Manuel and Wilson Alejandro-Mejia Velez was charged as being the shooter.
After that, the reporting on drug cartels from Cali, Colombia grew tremendously.
(Source: textbook and Wikipedia.)
-Tiffany Lorente
No comments:
Post a Comment