Jorge Masetti

Jorge José Ricardo Masetti Blanco (born 31 May 1929; disappeared 21 April 1964), also known as "Commander Segundo", was an Argentinean journalist and guerrilla leader.

In the mid-1940s, he was an active member of the Nationalist Liberation Alliance, an extreme right-wing organization, together with Rodolfo Walsh and Rogelio García Lupo.

During the Cuban Revolution he was the only Argentine reporter on the scene in the Sierra Maestra covering the 1958 guerrilla campaign led by the 26th of July Movement.

As a special correspondent of Radio El Mundo, he got several interviews with Fidel Castro, as well as with Che Guevara who became a close friend.

These interviews, the first opportunity for the people of Cuba and Latin America to hear the leaders of the Cuban Revolution in their own words, were broadcast by Rebel Radio.

Masetti's memories about these interviews were later compiled in Rodolfo Walsh's book Los que luchan y los que lloran ("Those who fight and those who cry"), the preface of which describes them as "the greatest individual feat of Argentinean journalism."

In addition to telling the story of his adventures, Masetti also discusses in the book the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, including, for example, an entire chapter devoted to Cuba's casinos and gambling scene in which he denounces government corruption under Batista's regime.

When he returned to Buenos Aires Masetti was discouraged to find out that his news reports had not been published in his country and because of that he accepted a task given to him by Che Guevara following the victory of the Cuban Revolution to found a news agency in Cuba.

This was the origin of Prensa Latina which still exists today.

Among the reporters and intellectuals who joined Prensa Latina under Masetti's leadership were Gabriel García Márquez, Rodolfo Walsh, Rogelio García Lupo, Carlos Medina de Rebolledo who was part of the Santiago editorial staff, Angel Boan, and Carlos María Gutiérrez, and contributors included Jean-Paul Sartre, Waldo Frank, Charles Wright Mills, and others.

In this period Prensa Latina covered such events as earthquakes in Chile, the military coup that overthrew President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina, and the revolution led by Jesús María Castro León in Venezuela.

From 4 to 5 March 1960, Masetti personally reported on the explosion of La Coubre, a ship docked in Havana Harbor which had exploded at the cost of 100 lives.

It is Masetti who appears in the original, uncropped photograph of Che Guevara, taken by Cuban photographer Albert Korda at the March 5, 1960 memorial for the victims of the La Coubre explosion.

In the uncropped photograph, Masetti's profile is visible in the left of the frame.

The cropped version of this photograph is widely considered to be the most-reproduced image in the world.

In 1961, Masetti left Prensa Latina disappointed by growing sectional rivalries within the organization, and also excited about playing a more aggressive role as a revolutionary.

Masetti himself said, "to be a revolutionary I had to sacrifice my inner journalist."

The same year he participated in the defense of Playa Girón during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and then he went to Algeria and created a team of guerrillas to fight for the National Liberation Front during the Algerian War.

It was in Algeria that Angel Boan, a friend and colleague of his from Prensa Latina, was killed in action.

After the overthrow of President Arturo Frondizi by the Argentinean military in 1962, Che Guevara and Masetti started to think about the possibility of setting up a guerrilla cell, or foco, in Argentina.

They eventually decided to start the struggle in Salta Province in the northwestern Department of Orán, a jungle area bordering on Bolivia.

It was a group of nearly 30 guerrillas, mostly Argentineans with a few experienced Cubans, which took the name of People's Guerrilla Army and made their first encampment at Emboruzú in Bolivia.

Masetti took the rank of deputy commander, saving the leadership for Che when he was ready to join the group after it had established itself.

Then the code of conduct was drawn up which, among other things, demanded the death penalty for homosexuality, as well as for treason, exploitation of the civilian population, rape, and theft.

In 1963, the situation changed due to the calling of limited elections won by Arturo Illia of the Radical Civic Union.

Peronists were not permitted to participate in the election.

On 21 September 1963 Masetti's guerrillas crossed into Argentina and after several days on foot settled down near the Pescado River.

Continuing with their plan to topple the government, they commenced the armed insurgency with a public letter to President Illia dated 9 July 1963.

The guerrilla Bustos was in charge of taking the letter to the media, which meant he had to travel through the whole country.

Though the letter had practically no impact on the media and on public opinion which barely noticed it, it did spark the immediate mobilization of the Argentine National Gendarmerie, Argentina's border security force then led by General Julio Alsogaray, the brother of politician and economist Álvaro Alsogaray, with the mayor of Salta Héctor Báez taking command of the troops in his city.

The guerrillas were well armed.

Héctor Jouvet said,

"'From the M1 Garand rifle, a semiautomatic with a six-round clip, up to the FN FAL with anti-tank grenades. We had American hand grenades, the Energas which were two bazookas with Soviet RPG projectiles, and the M1 and M2 that the Americans use plus the M3, which was like a PAM but with a bigger caliber, 11.25. Also, machine guns similar to the Halcón, like the ones that the Argentinean police had.'" Their first military objective was the gendarmerie post at Aguas Blancas, but the location was deemed unsuitable and another objective was not chosen.

Concerning one of the group's members, Adolfo Rotblat, or Pupi, Jouvet stated,

"'He was a little over 21 years of age... He already started to have problems on the march and this continued. We had to hold him a little so that he would continue walking and sometimes he slowed down our column... When we were without water for 24 hours, in the heat and with many difficulties in our path, Pupi lost strength and seemed to be cracking up. When we arrived at the camp he was very ill. He covered his head with his hands and curled up his body. Masetti then thought that we had to shoot him. I objected, telling him that I did not agree. When I insisted he told me, 'You will be giving a coup de grace to a dying man.' I said, no, I am not going to do it because he has violated no safety code: he was not a defector, was not cowardly in the face of the enemy, and was not gay.'"

Pupi was killed when Jouvet was away from the camp.

Born in Avellaneda, Masetti entered the jungle at Salta and after 21 April 1964 was not heard from again.

He was the founder and the first director of the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, and became the leader of one of Argentina's first guerrilla organizations, the Guevarist People's Guerrilla Army.

Jorge Josè Ricardo Masetti Blanco was born in Avellaneda, a city located in the industrial belt formed around the city of Buenos Aires.

He was born into a family descended from immigrants who came from the city of Bologna in Italy.