Juan Dufflar Amel

Dufflar, a witty, clever-rhyming and quick-witted man. Passionate about journalism, family, and Cuba. Proud moreover of his ancestors, of the grandparents from whom he learned sympathy for Arab peoples and also of hummus, falafel, couscous, roasted lamb and other "delicacies of the palate" that he used to share.

A native of Havana, from a very young age he sympathized with the forces that aspired to a better Cuba and with that idea he collaborated with the Popular Socialist Youth and with other revolutionary organizations.

At the triumph of the Revolution, he became part of that human wave that undertook the radical change of Cuban society.

In 1973 he graduated as a licentiate in Political Sciences from the University of Havana and from then on he began working at the fledgling newspaper of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, which at that time was called Los trabajadores.

For 20 years he worked in the international news section of the newspaper.

There were many coverages of events, news stories, wars. Juan remembers, in a special way, the summer of 1978, when together with the then very young José Alejandro Rodríguez they traveled invited by the Novosti agency. They visited different Soviet industrial and union centers. From the USSR, Pepe continued to Mongolia, and Juan to Vietnam, a beautiful nation that he toured from north to south, mainly the cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh.

In April 1998 he was the Trabajadores representative in the Upec delegation, presided over by Tubal Páez, to participate in an international anti-imperialist event organized by Libya, they also visited the Republic of Tunisia.

He completed an internationalist mission in 1985 as a war correspondent in Nicaragua, and had the opportunity to be part of the delegation of journalists that accompanied the Comandante en Jefe's last trip to Middle Eastern countries, which took place in May 2001. That experience was very useful in subsequent years in which he specialized in issues of that region of the world alongside colleagues such as Randy Alonso, Eduardo Dimas Fernández, Elson Concepción, Juana Carrasco, Leonel Nodal and others.

Descendant of a Syrian-origin family, he has been linked to the boards of the Arab Union of Cuba, in which he served as secretary general, and of the Federation of Arab Entities of America (Fearab América) and is a great expert on what happens in the Persian Arabian Gulf region.

Most of his professional career has been devoted to evaluating the different political processes that the world has experienced over the last 50 years.