Al (Alvaro) Bayona Gomez

Alvaro Bayona Gomez, Professional Journalist and Video Producer. He was born in Ocaña, North of Santander, Colombia, 1952. An Orthodox Jew. His parents, Jose del Carmen (Carmito) Bayona Vila, a former Judge and Adelma Celina Gomez Castro, a poet.
He grew up in Ocaña, what is believed to be the ancestral town where many Jews fled from the Spanish Inquisition, around 1500 C.E. and after.
He studied at Adolfo Milanes Elementary School  and thereafter to Jose Eusebio Caro High School, the most ancient High School in the area.
At the age of eighteen his family moved to Bogota. He began working for Radio Ritmos, a juvenile radio station in the Capital. Months later he got a job at the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones,
He studied  Systems Engineering at the Fundacion Educacional Autónoma de Colombia, but after 4th Semester he decided to devote himself professionally to journalism.
Bayona Gomez continued with his grandfather Ramon Gomez Portillo tradition, being a critic of the economic policies of his country.
Ramon Gomez Portillo was the first journalist in Ocaña, Colombia, where he published El Escalpelo in 1940, a weekly newspaper. Copies of the newspaper can be found in the National Archives of Colombia.
In 1972 Bayona Gomez begins publishing a monthly magazine about economic and agricultural topics. He started with La Vaquerita and in 1973 he switched to Agropecol, a monthly magazine dealing with the same topics.
At the same time he writes for several newspapers as La República, El Siglo, El Espacio from Bogota and, Diario del Oriente from Bucaramanga.
Likewise, he did several news-reports for Radio Santa Fe from Bogota and another radio station in Bucaramanga.
Alvaro Bayona Gomez had to quit his job as a Journalist due to political pressures. In 1979 was the target of a terrorist attack in its headquarters in Bogota.
In 1988 Bayona Gomez started building Cablevision a Cable TV Company in  Bogota. Due to some harassment, threats to kill him and pressures from some people, who worked for the Government, in 1999 had to close his company and travel to United States where he started working as TV Producer.