A pro-business newspaper whose 128 years of publication in Cuba gave it a certain cache, Diario de la Marina lost its freedom from government interference in its content and publication in May 1960. Then, Diario de la Marina and other papers, including its ideological rival Prensa Libre, were intervened, and shuttered by Communist Party-organized militias. Although Diario de la Marina had not publicly opposed Fulgencio Batista’s government nor had its editors taken regular handouts from Batista, its reputation for straight-shooting surely prompted St. George to interview José Ignacio Rivero, its final owner-director and chief editor, about Cuba’s options in the face of the paper’s inevitable nationalization.
