Guillermo Martinez, a pioneering Cuban-born South Florida journalist, has died at 80
Cuban-born South Florida journalist Guillermo I. Martinez, for decades a prominent and influential voice in both English and Spanish in television, radio and newspapers, has died.
Martinez, a former reporter and editorial board member at the Miami Herald, died Sunday in Miami. He was 80. Friends said the cause of death was cancer.
Equally at home writing and speaking in Spanish and English, Martinez was a pioneering and unifying force in local journalism, bridging the gap between Spanish-language media focused primarily on Cuban exiles and mainstream news outlets like the Herald, which was late in responding to the rapidly changing news audience in Miami.
While at the Herald, Martinez recruited a cadre of Hispanic journalists for its staff, opening the door to mainstream careers in English-language media for many and helping to significantly broaden the newspaper’s coverage of Miami, the Cuban exile and Hispanic community in both its news and editorial pages.
As one of only two Cuban-born reporters on the Herald staff in the 1970s, a time when Cuban exiles were beginning to flex their newfound political and economic muscle in Miami, Martinez complained to the newspaper’s crusty, legendary editor John McMullan that he needed to hire more Cuban-American and bilingual reporters to adequately cover the changing city.
When McMullan told Martinez in a meeting that such reporters were hard to find, Martinez replied: “I’ll get you some.”
And he did, recalled Cuban American Jay Ducassi, a veteran Herald editor who today oversees the newspaper’s coverage of Latin America, the Caribbean and immigration. Martinez assembled a list of candidates and the newspaper ended up hiring several, and he remained on the lookout for other promising prospects.
Martinez approached Ducassi, then working for local news radio station WINZ, at a news conference where the young reporter challenged a pair of college professors insisting with little evidence that the Fidel Castro government was behind a series of airline hijackings to Cuba by Mariel refugees.
“He definitely took it on,” Ducassi said of Martinez’s role as talent spotter and door-opener. “He felt responsible.”
Martinez also was on a team of journalists and editors who helped launch the Herald’s original Spanish-language supplement, El Herald, in 1976. The insert, initially consisting primarily of Herald articles translated into Spanish, eventually built its own staff — many of them Martinez recruits — before becoming a separate publication as El Nuevo Herald in 1987.
“He was a lone voice at the Miami Herald for a considerable number of years,” said former Herald publisher David Lawrence Jr. “He was a pioneer in Spanish-language journalism in this community, which wasn’t appreciated enough for many years.
“Some of those years were pretty painful to him. But finally the Herald awakened late to what was happening in its own community. And he was among the first people to call out the Herald on this topic and lead the way for genuine progress by the Herald.”
While Martinez, who left the Herald in 1987, never worked for Lawrence, who arrived at the newspaper two years later, the pair’s friendship went back to their student days at the University of Florida in the 1960s. They remained lifetime friends and frequent lunch companions, meeting always at Versailles.
“We would talk about everything and certainly Cuba was a large part of that,” Lawrence said. “He yearned for a free Cuba. He understood fully what it was like to be an exile. I trusted his journalism totally, his decency and integrity, totally.”
Martinez left the Herald in 1987 for a job as senior vice president for news at Univision, where he remained until 1993. After a five-year stint as vice president at the Cisneros Group, Martinez became a regular public presence across a broad range of media, writing a syndicated column and appearing as commentator and political analyst on TV and Radio Martí and Radio Caracol, among others. His opinion pieces were published in El Nuevo Herald, Diario Las Americas and the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Martinez also co-edited, with former Miami Herald executive Sam Verdeja, a 2012 book of essays on the history of Cuban exiles in Miami, entitled “Cubans: An Epic Journey.”
“He was passionate about what he did, and especially about journalism,” said Verdeja, a fellow Cuban exile and former vice president of marketing and community relations at the Herald. “Guillermo was very good in looking for a good story, but especially the human side of the story.”
Martinez, born and raised in Havana, was the child of two prominent figures in Cuba. His mother, Berta Arocena, was a journalist, writer and pioneering feminist who died before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. His father, Guillermo Martinez Marquez, was editor of Cuba’s biggest pre-Revolution newspaper, El Pais, and a founder of the Inter American Press Association, which named its biggest award after him. Like his son, Martinez Marquez embarked on a long career in journalism in the United States after leaving Cuba following the Revolution, when El Pais was closed by the new regime.
Martinez attended high school in Havana and Connecticut, before going to what is today Miami Dade College. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism at UF in 1966. That background gave Martinez a firm footing in both cultures as he launched his journalism career.
“Guillermo followed the tradition of his family,” Verdeja said. “He was a guy who loved this country, but he never forgot his roots in Cuba.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 4:06 PM.