Juan Carlos Gumucio

Juan Carlos Gumucio (November 7, 1949 – February 25, 2002) was a Bolivian-born journalist, writer and linguist.

The son of Azul Quiroga and architect René Gumucio, from an affluent and old-established family, Juan Carlos worked as a journalist for over 30 years, having started his career in his hometown, Cochabamba, as a crime reporter for Los Tiempos and Radio Centro.

After working for a period as political attaché in the Bolivian embassy in the United States, and as press secretary for the Organization of American States, he joined the Associated Press news agency in New York as a reporter. He was later posted to Rome, Teheran and Beirut. When AP ordered its foreign staff to leave Lebanon, after its bureau chief Terry Anderson had been kidnapped, Juan Carlos joined the Times and afterwards the Spanish daily El Pais, as its Middle East correspondent. He was one of the few western journalists to stay on in west Beirut as kidnapping raged in the mid-1980s.

After Lebanon, he became Jerusalem and London correspondent for El Pais.

He covered the collapse of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo.

Juan Carlos committed suicide near Cochabamba, Bolivia at the age of 52 on February 25, 2002. Leaving behind him his daughter, Anna and without ever knowing his daughter from his first marriage, Monica.

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