Salvador Schwartzmann

Salvador Schwartzmann Hasson was born in Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, on 10 April 1947. In 1965 he moved to Concepción to fulfil his ambition of studying journalism at the University of Concepción. While a student he worked for several local media outlets to pay for his studies and his life in the city.

Schwartzmann graduated at the age of 22 and began as a radio reporter for stations in the Concepción area. He went on to serve as head of news at the newspapers Color, El Sur and Crónica, as a television director at Canal 9, and as news director of Revista Nos.

He joined Radio Bío-Bío as a reporter in 1978 and stayed until 1993. Radio Bío-Bío later said he had worked through hard times, when reporting and investigating faced all the obstacles of a dictatorship. After a ten-year break he returned to the station in 2003 as head of news in Concepción, and remained in that post until his retirement in April 2016. In all he spent close to three decades at the station.

He also taught journalism at the Universidad del Desarrollo, where former students remembered him as a mentor.

In retirement Schwartzmann lived in Papudo, in the Valparaíso Region. He remained an active news sharer on social media, and his account on X had more than 117,000 followers. Friends and colleagues described him as always alert to the latest story, a great teller of anecdotes and cheerful even in the face of tragedy. He liked to say that he did not really work at Radio Bío-Bío, because he enjoyed it too much to call it work, and that what he disliked most was being made to take holidays.

Salvador Schwartzmann died on Friday 30 October 2026 at his home in Papudo, aged 79. His family confirmed the death to Radio Bío-Bío that morning, and the cause was not made public. The Municipality of Concepción declared communal mourning for the day and flew its flags at half mast. Mayor Héctor Muñoz thanked him for his contribution to Concepción and the Bío Bío region, and former presidential delegate Eduardo Pacheco, a former colleague, recalled his passion for journalism and his strong regional outlook.

Schwartzmann is remembered as one of the defining figures of journalism in the Bío Bío region. Colleagues credited him with shaping a style of citizen-focused radio journalism concerned with the issues that mattered to ordinary people, and with passing a strong regional outlook to a generation of reporters. Radio Bío-Bío called him an extraordinary reporter and a tireless worker.