Ricardo Alarcón

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the Argentine soccer player, see Ricardo Alarcón (soccer player) .

Ricardo Alarcón (2008)

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada (born May 21, 1937 in Havana , Cuba ) is a Cuban politician. After the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 2013, he was one of the highest representatives of the country's political leadership.

biography

Before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Ricardo Alarcón was a member of the July 26th Movement in Havana, which overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista , and organized the guerrilla youth brigades.

From mid-1959, at the suggestion of Fidel Castro, he presented the television program "Ante la Prensa" (Before the Press) on the national broadcaster CMQ TV, which Fidel and Raúl Castro, Ernesto Guevara and Osvaldo Dorticós often used to present the decisions of the revolutionary government to the public. This also made Alarcón known to a larger audience.

In 1959 he resumed his interrupted philosophy studies at the University of Havana. In October 1959 he was expelled from the July 26th Movement by the Havana Provincial Association because of his radical positions. In the same month, the national presidium elections of the student union FEU took place, in which, at the suggestion of Raúl Castro, in direct competition with the M-26-7 representative Pedro Luis Boitel, he was put on a joint list with three representatives of the former resistance movement Directorio Revolucionario , which, after a public intervention by the head of government and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, received the most votes from the students on election day. Alarcón was then deputy FEU chairman behind Rolando Cubela , the military chief of the Directorio Revolucionario, who had fought in alliance with Castro's rebel army and had the rank of comandante . After the FEU elections of 1960 in a climate of tough political conflict were postponed indefinitely and Cubela left the FEU in 1961, Alarcón took over the chairmanship of the association. In this position he made a significant contribution to subordinating the traditionally critical and pluralistic forces at the universities, which often posed a challenge to the government, to the unifying structures of the revolution. He completed his studies with a doctorate in philosophy.

In 1962 he joined the Cuban Foreign Ministry, where he was department head for Latin America until 1964. Since 1980 he has been a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) , of which he has been a member since it was founded in 1965. His focus is on Cuban foreign policy. He was Cuba's permanent representative to the United Nations (1966–1978) and then until 1992 first deputy foreign minister. From the 1980s to 2003, Alarcón was head of the Cuban Negotiating Commission on Relations with the United States .

From 1992 to 1993 he was Isidoro Malmierca's successor as Cuba's Foreign Minister . His successor as Foreign Minister in 1993 was the previous First Secretary of the Communist Youth Union ( Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas ), Roberto Robaina . Alarcón had been a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba since 1980 and President of the National Assembly since 1993 . He held both offices until 2013.

In a unique event for a member of the Cuban government, he faced a public debate in 1996 with Jorge Mas Canosa , then the leading representative of right-wing conservative Cubans in exile. The moderated television discussion between the Cuban Speaker of Parliament and the founding chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation was broadcast in the United States on the Spanish-language channel CBS-TeleNoticias and by over 20 Latin American channels, but not in Cuba. In the debate, Alarcón denied his counterpart that he was Cuban.

In February 2008, Alarcón was the focus of international media reports after a video recording of a discussion with students in Havana came to the public, during which he was confronted with exceptionally clear questions on pressing issues of Cuban politics, to which he had little to answer in terms of content.
→ Section "The discussion with the President of Parliament Alarcón at the UCI" in the article "Eliécer Ávila"

In the spring of 2012, Alarcón's closest collaborator, Miguel Alvarez, was arrested along with his wife and remained in detention without the Cuban media or the authorities reporting the case. In February 2014, it became known that Alvarez and his wife had been sentenced to 30 and 15 years for espionage, respectively.

In December 2012, the daily Granma , the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, announced the 612 candidates for the National Assembly (all unopposed) proposed to the people for approval in February 2012. As Alarcón was not on this list of candidates, it was communicated that he will no longer hold the office of President of Parliament from the coming legislative period. Esteban Lazo was elected as his successor at the constituent session of the newly elected parliament . In June 2013, Alarcón, aged 76, resigned from the Central Committee, along with other long-term members, and from the Communist Party's Politburo at the same time. Head of State Raúl Castro described this as a normal change that had to mean “nothing negative”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ricardo Alarcón in: Cubanálisis o. D., accessed on May 26, 2012 (Spanish)
2. ↑ Hilario Rosete Silva: No apoya el gobierno candidatos a la FEU  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interview with Alarcón in: Alma Mater from December 2002, accessed on May 26, 2012 (Spanish)  
3. ↑ Hilario Rosete Silva: Con todos los hierros  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interview with Alarcón in: Alma Mater from December 2002, accessed on May 26, 2012 (Spanish)  
4. ↑ William M. Leogrande, Peter Kornbluh: backchannel to Cuba , UNC Press Books, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4696-1763-3 . P. 408
5. ↑ Debate Alarcón - Mas Canosa 1996, video (54 min.) On YouTube, accessed on June 17, 2014 (Spanish)
6. ↑ Larry Rohter: The Unthinkable Becomes a TV Event: Cuban Aide Debates Anti-Castro Leader, in: New York Times, September 6, 1996, accessed June 17, 2014
7. ↑ Deborah Ramirez: Cuban Political Rivals Meet In Historic Debate, in: Sun Sentinel, September 6, 1996, accessed June 17, 2014.
8. ^ Juan O. Tamayo: Cuban police arrest top aide to parliament speaker Alarcón. In: Miami Herald, June 6, 2012, accessed June 8, 2012
9. ^ Juan O. Tamayo: Aide to Cuba's Ricardo Alarcon sentenced to 30 years for spying. ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Miami Herald of February 8, 2014, accessed February 9, 2014 (English)
10. ↑ Ricardo Alarcon Out As Cuba's Parliament Chief , in: Fox News Latino of December 20, 2012 (English)
11. ↑ Los candidatos del pueblo: La Habana  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Granma of December 22, 2012 (Spanish)  
12. ↑ http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2013/02/24/elegido-esteban-lazo-presidente-del-parlamento-cubano/
13. ↑ Fidel Castro's companion Alarcón no longer in Cuba's Politburo , in: Zeit Online, July 3, 2013
14. ↑ Cuba removes Ricardo Alarcon from top Communist body , BBC News of July 3, 2013 (English)