Longtime Cuban diplomat Ricardo Alarcón died on Sunday at the age of 84. During the Cuban revolution, he was a student leader who eventually became Cuba’s foreign minister and president of the National Assembly, Cuba’s parliament. He played a crucial role in talks between the United States and Cuba. Democracy Now! spoke to Alarcón in 2015 as the Cuban Embassy reopened in Washington for the first time in 54 years. “You should not overstate the role of diplomats,” Alarcón said of the thawing in relations between the two countries. “The real force that brought about this result was the peoples' struggle.”

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