Víctor A. Muñoz Riera

His astonishing fertility as a writer reached its most culminating realization in the brilliant sports chronicles that captivated fans during the first quarter century of republican Cuba.

Víctor Muñoz Riera was born in La Habana. His father, a wealthy merchant, determined to give him a refined education, enrolled him in the best schools of the capital and later in the Institute of this city until reverses in his father's fortune forced him to abandon his Baccalaureate studies. For this reason, the young Víctor suffered economic hardships that were aggravated by the death of his father.

Eager for improvement, in 1890 Muñoz embarked for the State of Florida where he would soon distinguish himself as a reader in the great tobacco factories of Tampa and Key West. And in this southern territory he began his journalistic life collaborating in the organs that defended the independence of his homeland "Cuba", "Tampa" and "Yara" of Key West.

In 1893 he married a young Cuban woman and years later he joined the expedition of the "Florida" and the "Fanita", driven by his loving desire to see his anguished homeland free.

After the liberating epic ended, he entered the Editorial offices of the Newspapers "El Cubano", "La Republica Cubana", "La Discusión" and "El Mundo" (1901).

"La Republica Cubana" was the stage of his formidable journalistic successes, his sensational sports reports, his entertaining humorous sections, his unforgettable chronicles about different aspects of worldly life. This diversity of subjects handled gracefully by his fertile wit caused the great Manuel Sanguily to exclaim these commendable words: "The style of Víctor Muñoz when he writes, reveals the facility and roguish grace that when he speaks, and in any case it is clear, easy, above all precise, which is the most wonderful thing".

And the philosopher Varona expressed himself thus: "Víctor Muñoz is entirely a modern man; and consequently a journalist of the day. He penetrates and possesses current events. By the subjects he treats and by the manner of treating them there is nothing archaic in him: the radius of his influence as a writer is thus extremely extensive; he always manages to fix an interesting, suggestive, picturesque, humorous or pathetic aspect of what he contemplates and knows how to express it with such fidelity of brush, that the sketch will not fade from our retina"

Elected Councilman for the Municipality of La Habana, to Muñoz is due the establishment in Cuba of "Mother's Day" on the second Sundays of each May. He was founder of the Association of Reporters of La Habana.

On July 25, 1922, in New York, he received death with a smile on his lips. Víctor Muñoz was then making his passage with the placid countenance of one who possessed a generous heart, whose flexible talent and subtle wit were admired by an entire generation of Cuban readers.