Jorge Timossi Corbani

Cuban writer of Argentine origin Jorge Timossi passed away at the age of 75 from a heart attack. He graduated as a chemist but his passion for letters led him toward journalism. He was founder of the Prensa Latina Agency and its correspondent in Rio de Janeiro (1959-1960).

Starting in 1961 he became a traveling correspondent for that agency. He spent three years as a correspondent in Algeria and covered the North American invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965.

Head of the Prensa Latina office in Chile in 1970 and had to abandon that country when Pinochet's fascist coup occurred. He then published the book "Grandes Alamedas, the Combat of President Allende" (1974), which had wide repercussion.

Award from the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ) in 1979.

He was subdirector of Information at Prensa Latina in its central newsroom. He was also correspondent for that agency in Argentina, France, Nicaragua, and Mexico. He reported as special envoy the Iranian revolution and visits by Fidel Castro to various countries or international meetings. Author of books of poetry, short stories, and testimonies.

Director of the Latin American Literary Agency and Vice President of the Cuban Book Institute, he was also director of the Copyright Literary Agency of Cuba.

He was awarded the Félix Varela Order (1996). He has other distinctions and recognitions, among them the Félix Elmuza, the Raúl Gómez García, the Juan Marinello Medal, and received the National Journalism Prize "José Martí".

He was a lifelong friend of Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino, the creator of Mafalda, and with whom he published a book in the 1990s.

This closeness enabled the communicator to become the model for the creation of Felipe, friend and neighbor of the perceptive girl. Quino took from Timossi his airs of a dreamer, absent-minded and a bit lazy.

With two enormous front teeth, thin and disheveled, Felipe spends his time reading comic strips of the Lone Ranger.