Ricardo Alarcón, one of the most powerful men during Fidel Castro’s government and an important player in relations with the US, died in Havana on Saturday night (30), his family announced.
The former diplomat was one of the architects of the first migration dialogue between Washington and Havana in 1978, when negotiations began with a group of representatives of the Cuban community in the US.
For this reason, Alarcón played a crucial role in the agreement with the Americans to put an end to the massive exodus of Cubans by sea in 1994 and was a protagonist in achieving the return to Cuba of Elián Gonzalez, then seven years old. He, who survived a shipwreck, was with relatives in Miami and returned in 2000.
A cigar smoker and rum drinker, always dressed in a guayabera, at one point Alarcón became the third most powerful man in the Communist Party, after Fidel and Raúl Castro.
He was also chancellor in 1992 and 1993 and then served as president of the National Assembly for 20 years, until he was removed from his post and leadership of the dictatorship. No reason was given for his downfall, although his closest ally, Miguel Álvarez, was arrested the previous year for spying for the US, and the procedure in such cases is to consider all of the person’s contacts compromised.
Even so, Alarcón remained a loyal member of the Cuban Revolution. “To Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, the master of diplomats of our generation, for whom we will always have deep respect, admiration and infinite affection,” Josefina Videl, vice-chancellor and Cuban leader in negotiations with the government, wrote on Twitter this Sunday (1st). of former US President Barack Obama.
Alarcón, born on May 21, 1937, from an early age participated in the July 26 movement, a revolutionary organization that removed US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959.
The former diplomat also served as leader of the Federation of University Students and, later, of the Union of Young Communists, the youth arm of the Communist Party of Cuba. During his years in charge of Parliament, Alarcón played an important role in the island’s campaign for the release of five Cuban intelligence agents who had been sentenced to long prison terms in the US for espionage.
