What has gone down in history as the first Latin American tour by a Cuban head of state took place between May and June 1960. Until then, several leaders of the Greater Antilles had made official visits to the United States, but none had undertaken a tour of Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Gerardo Machado, Miguel Mariano Gómez, Ramón Grau San Martín, and Carlos Prío Socarrás had traveled to the northern country. The last two had the gesture of attending Mexico, although it is believed to have been out of mere courtesy. In mid-1960, Osvaldo Dorticós was beginning a journey of a different nature, a tour that would have South American countries as its destination.

The initiative did not originate within the Revolutionary Government. It began with an invitation from the Argentine president to his Caribbean counterpart on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Argentina's independence. Subsequently, the leaders of Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico extended similar invitations. The invitations were analyzed with Fidel Castro, the principal leader of the Revolution, and then taken to the Council of Ministers. This body sanctioned the law approving Dorticós's tour.

The then-Cuban president would be accompanied by Dr. Raúl Roa, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Commander Pedro Miret, Minister of Agriculture; Dr. Luis M. Buch, Minister of the Presidency and Secretary of the Council of Ministers; Commander Juan Almeida, Chief of Staff of the Rebel Army; Dr. Leví Marrero, director of the Department of International Organizations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Captain Miguel A. Duque, director of the Department of Latin American Affairs of that same ministry; and Manuel E. Yepe, director of Protocol of the foreign ministry.

The delegation was named the Extraordinary Embassy on Special Mission. One of its fundamental political objectives was to offer first-hand statements and documentary evidence about events linked to the exercise of revolutionary power, at a time when the bourgeois press was disseminating false and distorted accounts of the reality of the island nation, while from the United States terrorist actions against the country were being encouraged. In that sense, at the suggestion of Che Guevara, the delegation also carried unequivocal proof of the subjugation of the traditional Cuban press to the Batista dictatorship, and of how the tyrant secretly subsidized newspaper companies and many professionals, both in Cuba and abroad.

Before its beginning and during its course, the U.S. government maneuvered to abort the Cuban leaders' tour. Imperialist pressures to isolate Cuba were strongly felt. This revealed the persistence of a strategy aimed at limiting their presence and voice in the region. As a result, there were countries on the subcontinent that opposed the visit.

Even so, the representatives of the Cuban government departed from José Martí International Airport in a Britannia aircraft of Cubana de Aviación at dusk on Sunday, May 22. One of the stops was in São Paulo, Brazil. From that great metropolis, a military aircraft took Dorticós to a meeting with the Brazilian leader on the island of Florianópolis.

While waiting for the return of the head of the delegation, Roa, journalist Eddy Martin, and other comrades went to an orange stand. Roa took one in his hands and threw it to Martin. Thus began a ball game with oranges. Upon his return, the Caribbean president must have been astonished by the unusual appearance of his foreign minister, who already had his tie and shirt stained with citrus juice. Before Dorticós's stunned gaze, Roa joked:

— Look how I am, man; Brazilian oranges are crap.

Roa's witty phrase, the ball game with the oranges, and the details of the context in which the first tour to Latin America and the Caribbean by a Cuban leader took place were recounted by Buch. Mentioned earlier as a member of the delegation, this participant-witness to the events included these passages of history in the book Gobierno Revolucionario. Primeros pasos.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff