Diego Graglia, journalist

Este artículo también está disponible en: Español

In late 2008, Expansión, Mexico’s leading business magazine, asked me to write a profile of successful businessman and public figure Alejandro Marti for the cover of its December issue, on which it usually names the Person of the Year. Marti was not in the news solely because he had just sold a controlling interest in the sporting goods and fitness empire he had built. During that fateful year, he had lost a teenage son in the hands of kidnappers and as a consequence had become a leading public figure in the calls for improved public safety. The crime had radically altered his plans for life in semi-retirement and that’s what I tried to portray in the narrative profile I wrote. The piece, however, was also expected to describe the business aspect of the story — quite a narrative challenge.

Reporting was hard, as it involved the private life of a powerful person, and only at the last minute –after I turned in my first draft, in fact– did Marti agree to an interview with the magazine.

Although it wasn’t part of the main thread of the story, I was glad to discover an as-yet unreported nugget: that Marti was a great grandnephew of Cuban independence hero José Marti, although Alejandro’s last name came from a different branch of the family: a niece of the Cuban patriot married Alejandro’s grandfather, Domingo Marti Riera.

Here’s the story in Spanish:

El ciudadano Martí

El secuestro y la muerte de su hijo lo empujaron a convertirse en la voz de la gente contra la delincuencia. Eligió la lucha, confrontó a las autoridades y nunca bajó los brazos. [ + ]

El tío bisabuelo José

El prócer y poeta máximo de Cuba, José Martí, que murió peleando por la independencia cubana en 1895, fue antepasado del empresario mexicano Alejandro Martí. [ + ]

* You can also read it on CNN Expansión’s website or Download it in a pdf file.