By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on July 16, 2026
Raúl Roa Kourí
In September 1960, as Fidel Castro paced impatiently through a room at the Shelburne Hotel in New York, a young Cuban diplomat recalled a proposal that could change the course of that visit. The hotel had just demanded a $20,000 deposit from the delegation. Fidel decided to leave. If necessary, they would sleep in tents in the United Nations gardens.
Then, Raúl Roa Kourí spoke with his father. Days earlier, Bob Taber—the journalist who had interviewed Fidel in the Sierra Maestra at the height of the insurrection—had relayed a proposal from Malcolm X: to house the delegation from the island at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem.
“Tell Fidel,” the foreign minister advised.
“In Black Harlem?” the Cuban leader asked, delighted.
Roa Kourí tracked down Malcolm X and called his father:
“We have two floors. They can come.”
Fidel meeting with Malcom X in the St. Theresa Hotel
Fidel was welcomed in Harlem by a humble crowd, and at the Theresa Hotel, he met with Malcolm X. The attempt to humiliate Cuba became an iconic episode in revolutionary diplomacy, one that is still remembered today in that New York neighborhood. Few people know that at the center of that story was a 24-year-old man whom everyone called Raulito, because he was the son of Raúl Roa García, the “Foreign Minister of Dignity.”
The nickname expressed affection, but also the burden that had weighed on him since childhood. He adored his father. He spoke of him with pride and tenderness: not only of the minister whose fiery rhetoric shook the OAS, but also of the slender man, a humorist, a reader of Salgari’s adventures, and someone deeply sensitive to the suffering of others. As a child, he asked his mother how such a beautiful woman could have married such an ugly man. Dr. Ada Kourí, an eminent cardiologist, replied to the boy that Roa had once had long, romantic hair and that one need only hear him speak to find him irresistible.
Bearing those last names was no easy task. At school, he was Roa’s son; at the university, the former dean’s son; in the diplomatic corps, the minister’s son. He said it himself: “I am more than just the son of the ‘Chancellor of Dignity.’ I am me.” He did not disown his surname; he claimed the right to earn it through his own achievements. And he succeeded. He represented Cuba at the United Nations and UNESCO, served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, carried out missions in numerous countries, and left behind books and chronicles steeped in memory, culture, and Cuban identity.
I met Raúl at the home of Lilian Lechuga, the mother of his wife, Lillian. I interviewed him and grew fond of him because of his unpretentious intelligence, his delightful conversation, and his unique way of weaving grand history together with intimate details.
He could discuss international politics and, moments later, tell a joke, recall a song, or recreate a family scene in the sanctuary of a home presided over by the imposing portrait of Raúl Roa García painted by Víctor Manuel, one of the pioneers of the Cuban avant-garde in painting.
He loved Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi, but also the trova, the mambo, and the danzón. He had met Che during his exile in Mexico in 1955, before the Argentine joined the Granma expedition, and he recalled with amusement that years later Guevara asked him how it was possible that he had become an ambassador without knowing a thing about anything. Che’s long shadow loomed large whenever he was asked what he would have liked to do but couldn’t: “I wasn’t in the Sierra.”
On July 9, 2026, he turned 90. Silvio Rodríguez dedicated “Rechazos” to him, a poem against that which divides and degrades human beings: “I reject everything that separates us,” reads the first line. Read after his death, it seems to capture something essential about Raúl. He spent his life forging connections: between generations, diplomacy and culture, family memory and national history, Cuba and the world. He died in Havana on July 12, just three days later.
He brought honor to the surnames he bore. They called him Raulito, and those who had the privilege of hearing him speak will continue to call him that. But he had his own name. He was Raúl Roa Kourí: the young man who linked Malcolm X with Fidel, the diplomat, the devoted son, the father of María Carla, Patricia, and Mariela, the grandfather, the husband of Lilita, the witness to an irreplaceable era, and the Habanero in love with his city.
Perhaps that phone call from Harlem remains a fitting way to remember him:
“We have two floors. You can come.”
There is also room in his memory. It holds Old Roa, Ada, Fidel, Che, Silvio, Havana, Harlem, and all of Cuba.
Source: La Jornada translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US