Albor Ruiz, a well-known Cuban journalist whose columns campaigned for Latino immigrants for The Daily News, El Diario and Al Dia News and demanded that the United States lift its long-standing trade embargo on his homeland, died on January 8 in Homestead, Florida He was 80 years old.
His sister, Enid Ruiz, said the cause was pneumonia.
Mr. Ruiz reached his largest readership at The Daily News in New York, where he was an editor for 23 years. the editor of his short-lived bilingual spin-off El Daily News; and a columnist who wrote with passion on immigration, politics, education, housing, art, literature and racism.
Mainly focused on the Queens borough and its vast range of nationalities, Mr. Ruiz wrote often about Latinos. But he also described people from other backgrounds, like the four Polish immigrants who were killed in a fire in an illegal apartment in the Maspeth area of the district – reminding him of having fled illegally with seven friends in a small apartment living in Miami, Cuba in 1961 – and “accented people who speak loudly these days,” like Pauline Chu, a Sino-American woman who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the city council in 1997.
People with “myriad accents,” he added, “added music to the sounds of New York.”
Sandra Levinson, the executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, said that Mr. Ruiz “cared about being an immigrant and identifying with everyone”.
Mr. Ruiz’s passion and concern for Cuba remained a foundation of his work. He wrote with cautious optimism in 2009 when President Barack Obama allowed Cuban Americans to visit them as often as they wanted. However, he criticized President Obama and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for failing to end the 1962 embargo imposed by President John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Ruiz has returned to his homeland several times. In 2000, he reported on the intense battle between Cuba and the United States over custody of Elián González, who fled Cuba at the end of November 1999 as a 5-year-old boy with his mother who drowned on the way to Florida. Over the next seven months, Elián became the focus of dramatic clashes between the governments of the two countries and his relatives in Cuba and Miami.
Shortly after Elián’s return to Cuba in the summer of 2000, Mr. Ruiz described his personal connection with the boy he had campaigned for to retreat to Cuba. They were born in the same coastal town, Cardenas, and attended the same school.
“For the journalist who always tries to keep his distance from his topics and to report as objectively as possible,” he wrote of Cardenas, “there are still stories that play their emotional strings powerfully and sometimes make wonderfully happy music, sometimes terrible sad melodies. For me, the Elián González saga is one of those stories. “
Albor Ruiz was born in Cardenas on November 27, 1940. His father Ricardo ran a grocery store and his mother Micaela (Salazar) Ruiz worked there.
At first, Albor was satisfied with the Fidel Castro revolution. However, his political outlook changed in 1961 when his father was sentenced to five years in prison on unsubstantiated charges. Albor’s subsequent anti-Castro activities, which sentenced him to death in absentia, resulted in him and two friends escaping Havana in a 14-foot boat in November 1961, a 12-hour journey.
About a year later, Mr. Ruiz’s two sisters and two brothers came to see him in a rented house in Miami. “He met us at the airport and bought us everything we needed,” said Enid Ruiz in a telephone interview. “Even at 20 or 21 he was so responsible.”
Her parents joined her after her father’s term ended in Miami.
Mr. Ruiz graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1969 and earned a master’s degree in philosophy from the school a year later.
For the next decade, he taught English as a second language in Manhattan, philosophy in Puerto Rico and Spanish at Lehman College in the Bronx. He was also the manager of a bookstore and publisher specializing in Latin American books.
And he was part of a Miami-based group of Cuban exiles, the 75-member committee that helped negotiate and process the release of 3,000 political prisoners from Cuba in 1978.
In 1985 he moved to the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario, where he worked as an editor, columnist and news editor. He also served as the editor of two Hispanic magazines from 1990 to 1993 before joining The Daily News as an editor. After two years he was named editor of the El Daily News.
“It was very exciting,” said Maite Junco, the editor of El Daily News in the metropolis, over the phone. “That big New York newspaper put this paper out. It was very big for the Latino journalist community. ”
However, due to limited circulation and distribution problems, the paper was closed after five months.
After it closed, Mr Ruiz told the New York Times, “We feel – and I speak for the editorial staff – that we did our job and I think in that sense we don’t regret it.”
While at The Daily News, Mr. Ruiz developed a reputation as a newsroom mentor.
“Albor was always there and believed in me and told me I was a great reporter, often when I needed to hear it most,” Ralph Ortega, a former reporter for the Daily News, said over the phone.
Mr Ruiz remained on The News’ staff until 2013 when he was fired, but worked as a freelance columnist until 2016 when he was fired. He then began writing columns for Al Dia News, a weekly magazine, and continued through November.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2003.
In addition to his sister Enid, another sister, Lidice Lima, and his brothers Ricardo and Elián survive Mr. Ruiz.
Mr. Ruiz was also a poet. His first collection, “Por Si Muero Mañana” (“In Case I Die Tomorrow”), was published in 2019. In the title poem he reflected on his love for Cuba – where his ashes are strewn – and concluded:
Back to the ground, Cuban country
I am a foreigner and she calls me
Everyone knows that Cuba claims me
In case I die tomorrow
How translated it says:
Back to the ground, Cuban country
I am a foreigner and she calls me.
Everyone knows that Cuba claims me.
In case I die tomorrow.
Comments are closed.