Luis Ortega Sierra

One of the most important journalists of Cuba's republican era died in Miami at the age of 94.

Ortega, who was born on June 21, 1916 in La Habana, worked in the newspapers La Discusión, Radio Audición, Resumen, Cuba Nueva and Misterio. He was among the founders of Revista Orígenes and took part, in favor of José Lezama Lima, in a famous polemic with Jorge Mañach.

He was a columnist for Prensa Libre, where he wrote the section Pasquín, one of the most read in the country, which he signed with the pseudonym Sol.

He was part of the Advisory Council of the regime established on March 10, 1952. Later, persecuted by Batista, he left the country following the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, on July 26, 1953, when the newspaper Pueblo, of which he was owner and director since 1952, was shut down.

He returned to Cuba in 1959, but within a few months he settled in the United States, where he wrote for the Hispanic press in New York and Miami.

A controversial man, of harsh diatribes and spectacular political shifts, he is without a doubt one of the most brilliant pens of Cuban journalism.

Luis Ortega Sierra was one of the great journalists that Cuba has
produced. From the time he began in this profession he never stopped
writing. He is a very controversial man. He exposes his opinions above
all other considerations.

Writer, journalist, professor, he has an extensive literary output scattered throughout newspapers and magazines. He is one of the most profound and brilliant Cuban writers.

If it were necessary to place Ortega in some Cuban literary generation, we would have to inscribe him, in some way, in the one that around the 1940s marked the tendency to react against the rhetoricism and frivolity of previous literary generations.

Until the 1950s his section "Pasquín" which was published in the afternoon daily newspaper Prensa Libre was one of the most read in the country. Shortly after the military coup of March 10, 1952, he stopped writing it.