Word: roa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Rejected Rejection. Roa did not even bat an eye. He told the Brazilian envoy that his televised remarks were "correct judgments based on concrete facts." He called Argentina's protest "malicious," sneered that the "dignity of Argentina was defended at San Jose by the delegation from Cuba and not by the delegation from Argentina." In a cold rage Argentina rejected Roa's rejection and recalled its ambassador. These were episodes in what Cubans call "the new diplomacy." The chief characteristic is supposed to be plain statements to peoples over the heads of their governments...
...Raul Roa, the director of the new diplomacy, is a nasty-tempered college professor on leave from Havana University, where he taught sociology and headed the faculty of social sciences. An oldtime leftist who organized fellow Havana University students against the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, Raul -Roa once had a reputation as a freedom fighter as well as a free thinker and writer (17 books, mostly on politics). He suffered imprisonment and exile, during part of which he studied in two Manhattan graduate schools (Columbia University, the New School for Social Research) and took a U.S. fellowship...
Rewarded Lackey. Early in 1959, the Castro revolution, which he helped as a relatively minor member of the resistance, rewarded Roa with the ambassadorship to the Organization of American States. When the revolution's first for eign minister was fired for anti-Communist views a few months later, Roa took his place and got the hemisphere for his lecture room. Now he is the face of Cuba at international gatherings...
Actually, Roa is a mere lackey in the Castro administration. He is not a part of the inner circle, and ranks not as a maker but as an executor of policy. He is told what to do and how to do it. The foreign ministry strongman is Carlos Olivares, nominally the subsecretary, who is much closer to the Communists. Roa's problem is that he cannot live down the evidence of his earlier independence. A collection of his 1953-58 writings published last year under the title En Pie (Afoot) shows that until recently he was above all antiCommunist...
...Costa Rica, Arcaya was Castro's warmest non-Cuban supporter at the meeting of the Organization of American States that censured Cuba. As a mortified Betancourt listened by short-wave radio, Arcaya fought to water down the resolution rapping Cuba, warmly embraced Cuban Foreign Minister Raul Roa (who happens to be Arcaya's fifth cousin). A phone call from Caracas summoned Arcaya off the floor. "You will return a hero of the Communists but not a friend of mine," said Betancourt, who thereupon ordered Arcaya to step aside and let another delegation official sign the resolution...