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Manuel De Dios Unanue Triangle

Photo by David Engelman, 2025

Photo by David Engelman, 2025Mayor Koch holds a private lunch with Spanish language newspaper El Diario La Prensa at City Hall. L to R: Carlos Ramirez, Mayor Koch, Tina Segali and Manuel De Dios Unanue in 1984, Edward I. Koch Collection, Courtesy of LaGuardia & Wagner Archives.

Manuel de Dios Unanue (1943-1992) was a Cuban-born journalist and radio host who was killed in New York City in 1992.

De Dios was born in Cuba in 1943 and moved to the United States in 1973, after time spent in Spain and Puerto Rico, he settled in Elmhurst, Queens. He worked as a journalist for several Spanish-language newspapers in New York City, before becoming editor-in-chief of El Diario La Prensa, the largest Spanish-Language newspaper in NYC, in 1984.

De Dios was best known for his investigative reporting on the Colombian drug trade. He wrote extensively about the drug cartels that operated in Queens, and he named names. His reporting made him a target of the drug traffickers, and he was slain on March 11, 1992, by a hitman for the Colombian drug cartel in the Meson Asturias restaurant on 83rd Street in Queens.

This small park on the border of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens was named in his honor in 1993.

Sources:

“Manuel De Dios Unanue Triangle,” New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, accessed September 15, 2023, https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/manuel-de-dios-unanue-triangle/history

Joseph P. Fried, “A Journalist's Torch Lies Fallen,” New York Times, November 7, 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/07/nyregion/a-journalist-s-torch-lies-fallen.html

Wikidata contributors, "Q49521339”, Wikidata, accessed December 7, 2023, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49521339

Wikidata contributors, "Q6752971”, Wikidata, accessed December 7, 2023, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6752971

“319612782,” OpenStreetMap, accessed December 7, 2023, https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/319612782

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