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Herman J.P. Portocarero (born 6 January 1952, in Antwerp) is a Belgian writer and diplomat of Portuguese and Spanish ancestry.
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Herman J.P. Portocarero (born 6 January 1952, in Antwerp) is a Belgian writer and diplomat of Portuguese and Spanish ancestry.
After graduating law school at Antwerp University, Portocarero practiced law at the Antwerp bar. He joined the Belgian diplomatic service in 1978. His first posting was with the Belgian permanent representation to UNESCO in Paris. In 1979 he joined the Embassy of Belgium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His main activity was to monitor Ethiopian politics and ongoing civil wars as Cold War proxy phenomena. In order to do so he widely travelled the country under often dangerous circumstances. In late 1982 he moved to the Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica—the beginning of a long and intricate relationship with the Caribbean region.
In Kingston as of 1983 he became deeply involved in the negotiations around the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, [1] the first step in a long career as a UN-related diplomat. The UN work became a full-time mission as of September 1985, when he moved to New York. After a first tour of duty there, during a sabbatical period 1989–1990, Portocarero worked as an independent consultant for the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières in the Sudan and Nicaragua, including at the fronts of civil wars: in Darfur and the Bar-el Ghazal in the Sudan, and on the Sandinista-Contra frontlines in Nicaragua. He took up diplomatic work and UN work again in late 1990, including during Belgium's mandate in the Security Council (1991–1992) in the aftermath of the first Gulf war and during the Balkan wars. In the summer of 1992 he returned to New York full-time and became one of the most active lobbyists for the UN Convention for the ban on anti-personnel land mines. [2] He has said that the passing of this treaty was one of the few satisfying results of all his work in the UN. [3] After the failed UNAMIR mission in Rwanda, [4] he was involved in the reform of UN peacekeeping operations. He addressed the Security Council on this issue in November 1994. [5]
In 1995 he became ambassador of Belgium in Havana, Cuba, and till mid-1999 was very active in promoting people-to-people contacts between Europe and Cuba, especially in the field of higher education. He established close personal connections within Cuban society, while engaging the authorities and seeking common ground on sensitive political issues.
In 2000 he took up UN diplomacy again (2000–2003), and after an intermediary posting as consul general in Atlanta, Georgia, returned to Kingston, Jamaica, in 2004 as ambassador to the entire Anglophone Caribbean island region, as well as to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. His work was mostly economic in Jamaica, chiefly helping to rebuild a public transportation system and infrastructure in Kingston, and politico-military in Haiti, monitoring the UN peacekeeping and institution-building efforts. [6] At the end of his ambassadorship in Kingston, in 2008, he became consul general in New York, where he was mostly active as a lobbyist and fundraiser, including for major Belgian arts events in New York and elsewhere in the U.S. [7]
In 2012 he ended his career as a Belgian diplomat to join the newly created European External Action Service, the diplomatic arm of the European Union. Based on his earlier experiences in Cuba and the Caribbean, as well as on his record in multilateral (UN) diplomacy, he was named the EU's first full-fledged ambassador to Cuba in July 2012. [8] Based in Havana, he oversees a diverse portfolio of activities in the political, trade and investment, and development cooperation fields. His previous experiences in the Caribbean also allow him to lobby for more cooperation within the region.
Portocarero's debut, La Combine de Karachi—an ironic take on high-brow crime fiction—was published in France in 1978. [9] His commercial debut followed in Dutch in 1984 with the novella Het Anagram van de Wereld, a conte philosophique set in an exotic brothel. It became an instant cult classic in its market. Other books, both fiction and nonfiction, followed at almost a yearly rate.
Portocarero's work was initially praised as an example of postmodernism and structuralism, but he gradually moved away from overly intellectual writing to reach a wider audience with straightforward storytelling and journalism.
His most successful work to date, Cubaanse Nachten (Cuban Nights, 2000), based on his experiences during the years 1995–1999 in Havana, is the best illustration of this new approach. The book combines a quasi-telenovela narrative about daily life in Cuba with short intervening chapters retracing Cuba's complex history and politics. Cuba also took center stage in his next book, Trance Atlantico (2001), an occult detective story based on an impressive African sculpture, setting in motion intrigues in a triangle between Havana, the Congo, and Brussels.
The next critical and commercial success came in 2006 with New Yorkse Nachten (New York Nights), a post-9/11 crime and corruption story. It won the Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime fiction.
In 2012, Portocarero published an extensive memoir on his life and his career as a Belgian diplomat, Diplomatie & Avontuur (Diplomacy & Adventure). It received high critical acclaim and was praised as a totally new approach to the tired genre of diplomatic memoirs, as it is a highly personal account based on experiences and insights, shying away from any name-dropping. [10]
Portocarero wrote the Latin libretto for the requiem Flamma Flamma , by composer Nicholas Lens. [11] A neoclassical work of monumental proportions, Flamma Flamma continues to be performed and broadcast worldwide since its 1993 premiere.
All of Portocarero's writings are closely linked with his professional and personal experiences. In his Diplomacy & Adventure memoir, he states that his writer's credo is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's, in the sense that you have to live first to have stories to tell.
Cuba's foreign policy has been fluid throughout history depending on world events and other variables, including relations with the United States. Without massive Soviet subsidies and its primary trading partner, Cuba became increasingly isolated in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, but Cuba opened up more with the rest of the world again starting in the late 1990s when they have since entered bilateral co-operation with several South American countries, most notably Venezuela and Bolivia beginning in the late 1990s, especially after the Venezuela election of Hugo Chávez in 1999, who became a staunch ally of Castro's Cuba. The United States used to stick to a policy of isolating Cuba until December 2014, when Barack Obama announced a new policy of diplomatic and economic engagement. The European Union accuses Cuba of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms". Cuba has developed a growing relationship with the People's Republic of China and Russia. Cuba provided civilian assistance workers – principally medical – to more than 20 countries. More than one million exiles have escaped to foreign countries. Cuba's present foreign minister is Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
Samuel Rudolph "Rudy" Insanally is a Guyanese diplomat. He has been Guyana's Permanent Representative to the United Nations since 1987 and was Minister of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guyana from 2001 to 2008.
Mayra Montero is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer.
Robert Vossler Keeley had a 34-year career in the Foreign Service of the United States, from 1956 to 1989. He served three times as Ambassador: to Greece (1985–89), Zimbabwe (1980–84), and Mauritius (1976–78). In 1978–80 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, in charge of southern and eastern Africa.
Dr. Carlos Alzugaray Treto is a Cuban diplomat and educator.
The Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation is the foreign affairs ministry of Belgium and is responsible for Belgian foreign policy, relations with the European Union, development cooperation policy and certain aspects of foreign trade policy. The central government in Brussels directs the network of diplomatic and consular representations abroad.
Jamaica–Mexico relations are the diplomatic relations between Jamaica and Mexico. Both nations are members of the Association of Caribbean States, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Organization of American States and the United Nations.
Haiti was one of the original members of the League of Nations, and was one of the original members of the United Nations and several of its specialized and related agencies. It is also a founding member of the Organization of American States. Haiti also has diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, instead of the People's Republic of China. Taiwan is one of Haiti's major trading partners and the two countries maintain very friendly relations. Haiti has also re-established very warm relations with Cuba in which a major act of bilateral cooperation has resulted in Cuba's large contribution of doctors to the country. The Haitian government has publicly shown admiration to Fidel Castro and his administration.
Cuba–India relations are the bilateral ties between the Republic of Cuba and the Republic of India.
Jeffrey DeLaurentis is an American diplomat who served as the Chargé d'affaires ad interim of the Embassy of the United States, Havana from 2015 to 2017 and is currently serving as the acting U.S. ambassador for special political affairs.
Ludwig Friedrich Emil Piani (1817–1862) – a portrait and landscape German painter born in Coburg, duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Germany. As child he was a playmate of the Prince Albert, the future husband of Victoria, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1837 Emil Piani made a trip to the United States and then to Cuba residing in the later approximately till 1846. In 1841 his studio was on Obispo Street, Havana, probably where today is the Florida Hotel. During his stay in Cuba made several trips to nearby countries like Jamaica. In both islands he painted several portraits of notable persons and landscapes. In 1852 he returned to Coburg and after few years came back again to the Caribbean. He died in Curaçao in 1862.
Verna Mills, also known as Verna Morris-Mills, is a diplomat from Saint Kitts and Nevis. She is currently the country's ambassador to Cuba, the first woman to hold that role. She also serves as the non-resident ambassador to Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya.
Diplomatic relations between Cuba and Suriname were established on 23 March 1979. Suriname has an embassy in Havana since 2003. Cuba has an embassy in Paramaribo since 1981.
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