R. Richard Rubottom, Who Helped Shape Cuban Policy, Dies at 98
R. Richard Rubottom, a diplomat who influenced and helped hone United States policy toward Latin America in the late 1950s, a time of economic and political tumult that culminated in Fidel Castro’s takeover in Cuba, died Dec. 6 in Austin, Tex. He was 98.
His family announced the death.
Mr. Rubottom rose from modest roots — his parents ran a boardinghouse in central Texas — to become the “official most responsible for defining United States Cuban policy” in the years immediately surrounding the 1959 Cuban revolution, the historian Thomas G. Paterson wrote in “Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution” (1994).
Mr. Rubottom began grappling with foreign policy issues in Latin America as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1956 to 1960. In 1958 he accompanied Vice President Richard M. Nixon on a widely publicized tour of Latin America that was marred by violent demonstrations against the United States. After protesters in Caracas, Venezuela, shattered windows in the vice president’s car, news reports suggested that Mr. Nixon partly blamed Mr. Rubottom for allowing his motorcade to be put in harm’s way....
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His family announced the death.
Mr. Rubottom rose from modest roots — his parents ran a boardinghouse in central Texas — to become the “official most responsible for defining United States Cuban policy” in the years immediately surrounding the 1959 Cuban revolution, the historian Thomas G. Paterson wrote in “Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution” (1994).
Mr. Rubottom began grappling with foreign policy issues in Latin America as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1956 to 1960. In 1958 he accompanied Vice President Richard M. Nixon on a widely publicized tour of Latin America that was marred by violent demonstrations against the United States. After protesters in Caracas, Venezuela, shattered windows in the vice president’s car, news reports suggested that Mr. Nixon partly blamed Mr. Rubottom for allowing his motorcade to be put in harm’s way....