By Johnny Diaz, Globe Staff

 It's early afternoon on a recent Wednesday and Joaquin Sune prepares to talk about the world, just
 as he has for 21 years at WUNR-AM.

 He flips through sheets of news wire copy with reports from Washington, Cuba, and Guatemala,
 swivels in his chair, and plops a soft ballad on the turntable. Minutes later, a commercial wraps up.
 Sune adjusts his headphone, focuses on the news reports before him, and leans into the bulbous
 black fuzzy microphone.

 After a jazzy tropical musical introduction, Sune is on the air in Spanish.

 ''We are in the third day of autumn ... Hurricane Isidore is heading toward Louisiana and
 Mississippi. Its outer rain bands attacked the North Florida coasts. Evacuations have been
 ordered. Isidore is expected to regenerate overnight .... In sports, the Red Sox continue winning.
 They have five games left ...'' announces Sune, sailing over the airwaves in a sonorous voice that
 echoes in the studio and spans across Boston's Spanish AM radios tuned to 1600 on the dial.

 For two decades, Sune, who lives in Natick, has been that steady, dependable, definitive voice for
 a part of Greater Boston's Latino community - alternating between merengue and Spanish ballads
 and Spanish-language news from around the world. He told Boston's newly arrived Cubans from
 the Mariel boatlift in 1980 where to get thicker clothes for winter, where to learn English, and
 where to find jobs. He chronicled the catastrophic 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the influx of
 Salvadoran immigrants to Boston after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country in 1998, and the
 2000 federal seizure of a motherless Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, from his family's house in Miami's
 Little Havana.

 Now it's Sune's turn to be the news.

 The Cuban-born Sune, 67, is signing off, leaving Boston radio and his Natick home for a life of
 retirement in South Florida to be with his son and four grandchildren. He is passing on his radio
 baton to a younger Salvadoran announcer, Daniel Gutierrez, whose show will run from 12:30 to
 3:30 p.m.

 Some call Sune one of Boston's pioneers in Spanish-language radio.

 ''He has had a very loyal listening audience that has followed him over the past two decades to
 keep up with Latin America and the Cuban exile community,'' said Alberto Vasallo III, vice
 president of El Mundo, a Spanish-language newspaper. ''He filled that particular need here in his
 own unique way. He would walk you through the news.''

 Vasallo said he remembers growing up in Boston, listening to Sune relay the news from his
 grandfather's radio. ''He is a straight shooter, a definite pioneer in Spanish radio. He grew up with
 radio and has radio in his blood.''

 Sune's journey in radio began half a century ago and 1,800 miles away - in Cuba. At 16, while
 attending a weeklong carnival in his native town of San Luis, a local locutor (news announcer)
 called the young man over to announce a soft-drink commercial.

 ''It sparked something in me, being on the radio. From that moment, I felt I had found my calling,''
 Sune said, adding he would observe the announcer report the news and he marveled at the power
 of information. ''I knew then I wanted to go into radio,'' Sune said in Spanish.

 Two years later, after studying radio broadcasting, Sune landed at a job at a local station, then
 known as CMDH, reporting local news. He worked at two other stations and was a popular radio
 announcer from 1955 to 1962.

 His steadiness on the air belies the tumult he experienced after the Cuban Revolution. Like so many
 other Cubans who sought to flee their homeland for new future in America, Sune applied to
 immigrate to the United States because he did not want to embrace Fidel Castro's new
 government. That move cost him his radio post.

 To make ends meet, he drove an orange-and-black 1952 Dodge as a taxi driver for few years to
 support his wife, Noelia, and their two young children. As he waited to leave the country, the
 government took away his driver's license and placed him in a labor camp in the Oriente province.
 He chopped sugar cane and harvested the fields for five pesos a week. (A Cuban peso, worth the
 equivalent of one American dollar in pre-Castro Cuba, plummeted after the takeover.)

 ''I was there for 22 months while my wife and children lived with my parents,'' Sune said. ''The
 camps were punishment for people who wanted to get out of Cuba. When you say you don't like
 the system, you are the enemy.''

 In 1969, Sune's immigration papers arrived, and he and his wife and children, Susel and Joaquin
 Jr., flew 45 minutes from Cuba to Miami, one of US President Lyndon B. Johnson's Freedom
 Flights. Sune was forced to leave his personal belongings, including bank savings, car, family
 photographs, and any deeds to property. They left with the clothes on their backs, a suitcase, and a
 pack of cigarettes. And all of 20 cents in cash.

 After spending a week in Miami, Sune and his family arrived in Boston and met up with his wife's
 relatives in Jamaica Plain. Sune found work in a Revere sugar refinery and also in a factory slicing
 bacon.

 But he couldn't silence his love for radio and news. In 1980, shortly after the Mariel Cuban boatlift,
 he approached WUNR with an idea to host a 15-minute program to help Boston's new Cuban
 residents. The show was called ''Cuba Despues'' (Cuba Later).

 Over the years, the 15-minute program swelled to a half-hour, then an hour, and most recently to
 two hours in a show called ''Radio Revista'' (Radio Magazine.)

 ''I enjoy reading the news. I feel I am doing a service,'' he said. ''There are so many Latinos here
 who don't speak English, and they depend on the radio for news of their countries,'' said Sune, who
 collects reports in Spanish from The Associated Press and Miami's El Nuevo Herald newspaper
 from WUNR's wire room.

 Sune is a one-man show. He solicits his advertising from Latino businesses, produces the ads, and
 prepares his own copy. In 1985, he launched his own business out of his home, International
 Advertising Agency. With enough money saved up, he bought a ranch-style house in Natick in
 which to rear his children.

 During his news segments, he delivers his news with a soft-yet-resonant spark, a Spanish-speaking
 Dan Rather, if you will. Sometimes, he can be personal, beginning the show with phrases, ''Mi
 queridos amigos'' (My dear friends) and often culminating a show with a phrase that translates as ''If
 you know where your child is at 10 p.m., then you are a good parent.''

 He can also be blunt.

 A common target on his mike: Fidel Castro, whom he has referred to as ''el viejo loco,'' a crazy
 man, especially during the Elian Gonzalez case in 1999 and 2000.

 ''Taking that boy back to Cuba was a crime. That was all political,'' Sune said, adding that he
 delivers his news objectively but then peppers his news analys es with his own takes. ''I have spent
 a lot of my time punishing Fidel for what he has done to Cuba.''

 When word began rippling out that he was leaving Boston, phone calls poured into the studio from
 listeners during commercial breaks. ''Si, me voy a la Florida,'' he tells one caller. (Yes, I'm going to
 Florida.)

 At 1:59 p.m. on Sept. 27 on Sune's last day, he signed off from Boston's airwaves with two simple
 words:

 ''Hasta pronto,'' he said.

 Until next time.