Wayne S. Smith, the State Department’s senior Cuba expert who spent nearly 40 years leading efforts to rebuild relations between Washington and Havana after resigning in 1982 in protest of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, was Died June 28 at home in New Orleans. He is 91 years old.
His daughter, Melinda Smith Ulloa, said the cause of death was complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
For more than 24 years, since joining the Foreign Service in 1958, Mr. Smith has been an American in Havana, whether he was handling matters in the Cuban capital or from his desk in Washington.
Later, after leaving the State Department, he used his extensive experience to continue the campaign against the U.S. strategy of isolating Cuba, while also leading private and congressional delegations to Cuba in an attempt to establish channels for dialogue.
“He is one of the most important spokespersons for normalizing relations,” William Leogrand, an expert on Cuban affairs at American University in Washington, said in an interview.
A witty and flexible writer, Mr. Smith has published dozens of opinion pieces, journal articles and books, including a memoir and history, “The Closest Enemy: The Personal and Diplomatic Story of U.S. Relations with Cuba Since 1957” “Account”, which was published in 1987.
“Cuba seems to have the same effect on the U.S. government as the full moon does on werewolves,” he likes to say.
Mr. Smith first arrived in Cuba during the revolution against the government of Fulgencio Batista. After the government collapsed on January 1, 1959, he was responsible for the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Cuba, including future actress Katharine Turner, whose father worked at the embassy.
He became an outspoken critic of the State Department’s hardline stance toward Cuba and was one of the officials selected by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to reset relations. Two years later, Carter sent him to Havana to run the U.S. Interests Section, which represented the United States in place of the embassy.
Mr. Smith dislikes the Cuban regime. But he believes in the power of diplomacy and dialogue, and first-hand experience leads him to believe an embargo is self-defeating and contrary to U.S. interests.
Ronald Reagan’s ascension to the White House marked an intensification of U.S. policy toward Cuba, in part because the island nation’s leader, Fidel Castro, was sending weapons to left-wing guerrillas in Central America.
Mr. Smith sent a series of critical cables to the State Department; in response, the department attempted to move him to a new post in Uganda. In August 1982, he angrily resigned in protest.
Weeks later, he published a condolence article in Foreign Policy magazine, accusing the administration of being “short-sighted” toward Cuba, continuing what he said was a long tradition of errors.
“The government is determined to repeat the mistakes of the past,” he wrote. “Its approach to Cuba is both unsuccessful and banal, and leaves a strong sense of déjà vu.”
Wayne Sanford Smith was born on August 16, 1932 in Seguin, Texas, east of San Antonio. His mother, Opal (Baldwin) Smith, maintained the home. His father, Paul Smith, was an oilfield engineer, a job that kept the family traveling throughout Wayne’s childhood in Texas and Oklahoma.
After graduating from high school at age 16, he convinced his father to sign papers allowing him to join the Marine Corps as a minor. He saw combat during the Korean War and then served as a training instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina, one of the Marine Corps’ primary training sites.
He was honorably discharged in 1953 and subsequently attended the Mexico City Academy (now part of the National Autonomous University of Mexico) on a football scholarship.
In 1957, he joined the State Department and was responsible for Cuba and Latin America. In 1958, he passed the diplomatic examination.
In 1958, he married Roxanna Phillips, who also worked for the State Department, and they honeymooned by car and boat south just before being assigned to Cuba. She died in 2014.
Along with their daughter, he leaves behind their son Sanford and two grandchildren. A previous marriage to Jacqueline Richard ended in divorce, and he was preceded in death by a son from that marriage, Michael Smith.
Mr. Smith also served in Argentina and Brazil. In 1962, he earned two master’s degrees in philosophy and international relations from Columbia University. He received his PhD in political science from George Washington University in 1977.
After retiring from government, he served as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and in 1992 joined the Center for International Policy, a progressive think tank, as a senior fellow.
The embargo against Cuba remained in place, and in that sense Mr. Smith did not live to see the success of his efforts. But in 2015, the United States restarted relations with Cuba and reopened its embassy. Mr. Smith watched the flag-raising ceremony in Havana.
“Cuba has been my life,” he said in a 2015 video interview with The New York Times. “I was there when we broke up, so when we drag the Stars and Stripes over the old embassy, I want to be back there again. It’s going to be a great day for all of us, especially me, because when we I was there when the flag was pulled down.
