Background
He was born in Cochabamba on November 7, 1949.
He was born in Cochabamba on November 7, 1949.
One of the country"s oldest churches, at Santa Cruz, bears a plaque recording its foundation in the 16th century by his ancestor. Gumucio 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. During the early 1970s, Gumucio was forced to leave his native Bolivia for Argentina following a military coup.
Due to his involvement with activism in left-wing politics, he was unable to return to Bolivia and moved to Washington where he worked for a period as a political attaché in the Bolivian embassy in the United States and as press secretary for the Organization of American States before joining the Associated Press news agency in New York as a reporter.
He was later posted to Rome, Tehran and Beirut. When Associated Press 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 País, as its Middle East correspondent.
Gumucio was one of the few Western journalists to remain in West Beirut after the hostage crisis reached its height. Most of the foreign press corps fled in 1986.
