NEW YORK (AP) — Isaac Flores, whose decades-long career included meeting Fidel Castro and covering Cuba for The Associated Press as a resident American correspondent on the island after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, has died. He was 93.Flores, who went by the name Ike Flores in his byline, died June 12 at an assisted living facility in Greensboro, North Carolina, said his son Michael Flores.Born in 1932 in a small town in Depression-era New Mexico, Flores’ dream from a young age was to get out into the larger world as a foreign correspondent, his son said.“He had a great career,” Michael Flores said. “He was one of the few guys that I know who as a child had a dream of what he wanted to be and damn if he didn’t go do it.” It was through his work at the AP that Flores made his dream come true. After starting part-time with the company in 1958 in the southwest United States and some years spent at headquarters in New York City, with stints reporting on stories in the Caribbean, he was posted to Havana in 1965.
He reported from Cuba as Fidel Castro changed the nationReporting from Cuba had been difficult for several years, following the takeover of power by Fidel Castro in 1959 and the disastrous U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow him through the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. Flores became the first American journalist after that incident to be a resident correspondent.He recounted a one-on-one meeting with Castro, for a book about the histories of Cuban exiles written by another former Associated Press journalist, David Powell.Flores recalled hearing that Castro was having a night meeting at a pizza place, and went there. Told about a journalist waiting outside, Castro had him come in.
