Ex-State Department Official Critical of Cuban Embargo Dies at 91

(ConservativeSense.com) – Wayne S Smith, a diplomat who resigned in protest at America’s Cuba embargo in 1982, has died at age 91. His daughter Melinda Smith Ulloa announced his death and said it resulted from Alzheimer’s disease-related complications. Smith joined the State Department in 1957 before moving on to become the leader of President Jimmy Carter’s US interests office in Havana. After 25 years with the federal government, he resigned in protest at America’s policies toward Cuba, as well as its approach to conflict in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Mr. Smith firmly believed that dialog rather than punitive measures was the correct way to engage with Cuba. In 1958, the US imposed an arms sales embargo on the island, and two years later, after its government nationalized American-owned oil refineries without compensation, extended the embargo to include food and medicine. President John F. Kennedy stretched it further in 1962, applying it to almost all trade between the nations. It remains in place today.

After leaving the federal government, Mr. Smith became a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where he remained until 1998. He consistently pleaded with US lawmakers to lift the Cuba embargo and established a medical interchange relationship with Cuban doctors, with whom he shared guidance and research results.

Born in Texas in 1932, Smith had degrees from Columbia and George Washington universities. From 1949 to 1953, he served in the US Marine Corps and was deployed to the frontline during the Korean War. The physician also authored several books, including “Castro’s Cuba: Soviet Partern or Non-Aligned,” in 1985, “The Closest of Enemies: Personal and Diplomatic Account of United States-Cuban Relations Since 1957” in 1988, and “Portrait of Cuba” in 1991.

In 2001, Smith was among US delegates who visited the Bay of Pigs invasion site in Cuba. This was the scene of an unsuccessful coup against Fidel Castro in 1961.