U.S. State Department will switch out its top diplomat in Havana
The U.S. State Department will appoint Timothy Zúñiga Brown as the new chargé d’affaires for its embassy in Havana, the Miami Herald has learned.
He will replace Mara Tekach, who in turn will take his current position as coordinator of the Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs.
Diplomats on foreign missions usually rotate every few years.
State Department officials declined to comment on the change until the official announcement is released.
Zuñiga Brown has a long experience on Cuban issues. He worked at the then U.S. Interests Section in Havana in the late 1990s. He later worked at the Office of Cuban Affairs before taking other diplomatic assignments in Ecuador, Mexico and the Bahamas.
Tekach, who has been in charge of the embassy since 2018, has overseen American diplomacy in a period of deteriorating relations between the two countries.
U.S. diplomats in Havana are usually attacked by Cuban propaganda, but she appears to have hit a nerve.
Unlike previous officials, who kept a low public profile, Tekach openly criticized the Communist system on social media. Her support of the island’s dissidents prompted an editorial in Granma, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, in which she was accused of “recruiting mercenaries” and trying to discredit the government.
More recently, Tekach has been coordinating evacuation flights for U.S. citizens and residents who were stranded in Cuba due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 2:19 PM.