Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Chair “Jorge Castillo” and his Reprehensible Acts
Dear Sirs,
Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Board members.
Of my special consideration:
After a few months away from my usual activities, as Editor of Latin Opinion Newspaper and a member of this corporation, motivated to issues with my mother’s health that required my urgent attention, I address myself to you today, very respectfully, to expose that the Mr. Jorge Castillo, chair of the Maryland Hispanic chamber of commerce, during my absence, without any cause or foundation and in a wicked manner, has given way to the despicable task of defaming me, making imputations that injure my rights to honor and reputation, causing with such actions not only the moral damage inherent to the public offense, but also impacting my estate, which, as a consequence, has experienced a considerable decline.
As it is known by the board of Directors of the Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Castillo expressed in a communication signed by him and sent with copies to members Juan Barbaran, Corina Morga, and Beverlee Berthel, that Latin Opinion Newspaper has used the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for its own financial benefit. This malicious and tendentious fallacy places me in the unavoidable duty of formally claiming through this missive, the intervention of the Chamber, sure as I am that other members of recognized honesty are not part of this unfortunate campaign of discredit against me, and therefore must be disconnected from all liability regarding the unilateral actions undertaken by the previously mentioned individual.
Pursuing the preceding explanation, I publicly and categorically deny the allegations from this campaign, created with dark purpose, apart from moral integrity, lacking veracity and professional ethics, which translates itself into an obvious violation of my rights to honor and reputation; a situation which empowers me to judicially demand their moral and material reparation. In this regard, I would like to urge Mr. Castillo to provide evidence of his unfounded claims or otherwise, make a public retraction of them.
In the same way, I express my unwavering decision to place at the disposal of the MHCC and the competent authorities, all the records of the income and accounts since the time before receiving the honorable distinction of presiding this institution, knowing that all the money deliveries of the last years made by the previous administration teams are registered there. It should be noted that since I assumed the presidency, and under the commitment to rescue it when time allowed to do so, there have been no commercial transactions. The transparency and good standing status (up to date with taxes) has been under the supervision and comptrollership of the same firm that has led the accounting of the BHCC in recent years.
In addition to the above mentioned allegations, Mr. Castillo also points out that Latin Opinion deceives its readers, the Latino community of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. This constitutes an evil and unfair accusation that only seeks to undermine the credibility of our publication, as well as to question the impeccable and supportive management that has been the pride of our editorial work for more than 20 years, so we repudiate the unwholesome purpose that it promotes.
Finally, I would like to refer to a certain communication whose contents have filtered out of the walls, in which this grey character -Jorge Castillo- would have asked the Maryland Government for an investigation into Latin Opinion, in which he even threatened to take action through the Baltimore Business Journal, where he would have a reporter ready to start the “investigation” in case the authorities did not do so, according to his request. We have received confirmation; however, that Mr. Castillo’s remarks were considered irrelevant by the State Government Office and this ended up this new attack against us which. By the way, Mr. Castillo’s comment about having a BBJ reporter on his side was already openly and categorically denied by the editor of the BBJ.
It is obvious that behind this cruelty there are sordid hidden interests which suggest that the one who should be investigated is Castillo himself. Nothing justifies his desire to create anxiety in the Hispanic community of the state of Maryland, perversely inciting the discredit of our publication and attacking me personally with unfounded allegations that are in the border of defamation and slander. ¿Could all this be the product of a perverse alliance of Castillo with another Hispanic publication? We do not know for sure, but we believe that the MHCC should take part and set a position in this shameful matter and demand, as I do vigorously through this route, that Mr. Jorge Castillo provides reasons which give grounding to his accusations or, instead, that he publicly retracts from them, without prejudice to the legal actions that we will have to take in Latin Opinion for this embarrassing case that, with no doubt, injures my rights as a publisher and as a citizen.
It seems timely to remind the unfortunate antecedent that we had when the citizen Gigi Guzmán, who is a MHCC Board of Directors Member, in December 2005 hired the services of a lawyer to sue Latin Opinion and conditioned the withdrawal of that action to the fact that Latin Opinion proceeded to withdraw from the streets of Baltimore an edition containing a community complaint. In that occasion, the Editor’s office of the newspaper, faithful to its social commitment to the Latino community of Baltimore, refused to withdraw the circulation of that edition and, nonetheless, was not sued by Mrs. Guzmán.
I believe that the public opinion should be aware of Mr. Castillo’s attacks, which I sincerely deplore, as a communicator who delivers service to a whole community and in this specific case, to the state of Maryland. And for these reasons, we exhort legislators and public officials committed to the Latino community in the state of Maryland, to add efforts to stop characters of such low ilk as Mr. Castillo, in his exorbitant desire for destruction without limits and in the abuse of his faculties as MHCC Chair, at the expense of ethics, morality and the service deserved by the Hispanic community in our city and our state.
Sincerely yours,
Erick A. Oribio
Publisher
Latin Opinion Baltimore / Maryland Newspaper.
