Humberto Medrano

Journalist and lawyer Humberto Medrano was a champion of press freedom in republican Cuba who challenged Fidel Castro early on. He died in Miami at the age of 96, victim of a heart attack at his home in Coral Gables.

He was serving as director of the newspaper Prensa Libre—founded by his father-in-law, journalist and politician Sergio Carbó—when he wrote a passionate defense of Diario de la Marina following a symbolic burial held on the steps of the University of La Habana on May 14, 1960.

"It is painful to see the freedom of thought buried in a center of culture. It is like seeing a legal code buried in a Court of Justice. Because what was buried last night on the Hill was not a particular newspaper. What was buried symbolically was the freedom to think and say what one thinks," Medrano wrote in an editorial article titled "The Gravediggers."

Two days later, a group of Cuban revolutionaries seized the Prensa Libre building and Medrano was forced to abandon his office, get into an automobile, and take refuge in the Panama Embassy in La Habana, where he requested political asylum and managed to leave the island for Miami.

This was not his first confrontation with Fidel Castro. From Prensa Libre he had denounced abuses of power, the illegitimacy of the so-called revolutionary tribunals, executions, and the dismantling of journalism in Cuba.

During one of the visits the Cuban leader made to the Prensa Libre newsroom, he suggested to Medrano that the newspaper's facilities would be ideal to house the headquarters of the Ministry of Information. The journalist told him no, but Castro insisted: "Don't let down the revolution," he told him.

Medrano replied: "Don't you let down Cuba, Comandante."

They never saw each other again. Medrano left Cuba on May 20, 1960 and never set foot on his homeland again.

His trajectory in exile was that of a tireless activist denouncing human rights violations and defending freedom of expression in his country.

"Medrano's voice rose in the sixties in the principal international forums to defend hundreds of people imprisoned in Cuba who, within the prisons, received his work as a breath of hope."

Born in Pinar del Río, Medrano was the son of Ignacio Medrano, a colonel of the Liberation Army of Colombian origin who embraced Cuba's cause as his own and enlisted in the invasion of the west under the orders of General Antonio Maceo.

He completed his primary education with the Piarist Fathers and graduated with honors from the School of Law at the University of La Habana in 1938.

He was arrested three times during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and was in the front line of defense for Commander Enrique Borbonet Gómez, tried for participating in the so-called Conspiracy of the Pure on April 4, 1956. His article "My Friend Borbonet" earned him the Justo de Lara journalism prize that year.

Upon arriving in exile, he was invited by the Inter-American Press Society (SIP) to its XVI General Assembly in Bogotá, Colombia. There he presented the report "How Press Freedom Was Suppressed in Cuba," which was translated and reproduced by several international publications. Medrano's denunciation served as the basis for Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1963.

In Miami he worked as a taxi driver, car salesman, radio commentator, and columnist for Diario Las Américas, where he remained a contributor until the end of his life.

He also founded a committee to make known to the world the treatment of political prisoners in Cuban prisons, in collaboration with the organization Amnesty International.

In 1974 he was appointed SIP representative to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington. As SIP representative he appeared before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

He was one of the founders of Radio Martí in 1985, by appointment of President Ronald Reagan. His first position at the station was as subdirector, in charge of directing news services and programming. Between 1989 and 1997 he headed the Radio and Television Martí Office in Miami.

When Radio TV Martí operations were transferred to Miami, he was appointed chief advisor to the Office of Broadcasting to Cuba (OCB).

In April 2012 he received a public tribute in the Félix Varela Hall of the Ermita de la Caridad in Miami for his contribution to the defense of human rights.

His articles and ideas about the Cuban situation are collected in the books Without a homeland but without a master (1963) and Paper Roads (1977) and published in Miami.

He is survived by his second wife, Mignon Medrano, and his only son, Ignacio Medrano Carbó, who is the result of his marriage to Alelí Carbó, who is now deceased.