José Ignacio Rivero

José Ignacio Rivero y Hernández ("Pepinillo" Rivero) was a Cuban exile and journalist. He is the grandson of Don Nicolas Rivero, who in 1895 became the director of Diario de la Marina, then the most popular newspaper in Cuba, and the son of Pepin Rivero, who took over the newspaper upon the death of Don Nicolas in 1919. After the newspaper's public battle with Fidel Castro, Rivero was exiled from Cuba.

He is the first cousin of Felipe Rivero, the director of the Cuban Nationalist Association at the time that they were implicated in the firing of a bazooka at the United Nations headquarters in 1964.

Career as a journalist In 1943, Rivero graduated with a journalism degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee.

In 1944, with the death of Rivero's father, José Ignacio Rivero Alonso, Rivero took over the management of Diario de la Marina from Ramiro Guerra, who had temporarily assumed the management of the newspaper. The Cuban government confiscated the newspaper and nationalized all of its property.

On May 12, 1960, Raúl Castro and Rolando Cubela Secades gave a symbolic burial of the newspaper at the University of Havana.

Death and legacy

Rivero's memoirs, Prado y Teniente Rey and Contra Viento y Marea Memorias de un Periodista: Periodismo y Mucho Mas, 1920–2004, recount his experiences as director of the Diario de la Marina newspaper, the circumstances leading to his exile, and his ongoing activism on behalf of freedom of the press.

He died in Miami on August 3, 2011.