Former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez had a popular show on Caracol 1260 AM radio every afternoon. La Hora del Regreso, which translates roughly into “the afternoon rush hour,” was a political lightning rod that went after national hoodlums like Donald Trump and local hoodlums like Joe Carollo.
Until last week, when it was summarily cancelled without any notice after the owners of AmericaTeve signed an agreement to purchase the Miami radio station. They contract was signed Monday. Martinez was dismissed on Tuesday. By telephone.
“I was sitting reading the Herald and the Washington Post, looking for the stuff I was going to do on the show,” he told Ladra. “I was going to have [Miami Mayor] Francis Suarez on. I had to tell him it was cancelled.”
It seems like censorship. From one day to the other? Such a popular show?
Political consultant and absentee ballot queen Sasha Tirador, a frequent guest on La Hora del Regreso, said it made no sense.
“When you let go a talent like Mayor Raul Martinez, out of spite, without taking into consideration that he has the highest ratings of the radio station that you just purchased, all you’ve done is show everyone how inept you are and how you are gong to run the station into the ground,” Tirador told Ladra.
Read related: Bayfront Park board member resigns on Joe Carollo’s $1 million no-bid giveaway
Las malas lenguas say Martinez was fired because Carollo — a frequent target on his show — is close to Miguel Cossio, one of the owners of AmericaTeve. The commissioner gave his daughter, Camila Cossio, a botella job at the Bayfront Park Management Trust.
Perhaps this is how Papi repays the favor.
“No letter. No warning,” Martinez told Ladra. “I was not allowed to say goodbye to the audience.”
But he doesn’t have to.
Because if you know Martinez you know he isn’t going to just go away.
“Do you think they’re going to shut me up?”
Martinez has created a platform on YouTube, a channel called Sin Mordaza — which translates to “without a gag” — where he can continue to enlighten us with the inside scoop on local, state and national politics and his experienced analysis.
“I am who I am and I’m not gift to be silenced,” Martinez said. “I’m going to have more fun if I own the platform.”
Ladra predicts that Joe Carollo will regret this.
Raul Martinez gets dismissed from Caracol; gets his own YouTube channel added by Ladra on
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