Isaac ‘Ike’ Flores, longtime AP correspondent who covered Castro and Cuba, dies at 93

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 nation

Reporting 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.

“He was still a fairly young man,” Flores told Powell for the book, “Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles.”

“I had seen him at various places, but to meet him for the first time, he was an impressive figure, with that beard and cap, the fatigues and boots. He was personable, but charismatic? I wouldn’t go that far. He liked people. He talked to people whenever he could, so I guess to Cubans he was charismatic.”

A long career followed

Flores left Cuba in 1967. “Not surprisingly, Flores gradually became persona non grata and asked to be reassigned,” an AP Corporate Archives account of the agency’s coverage in Cuba said in 2015.

Postings in Portugal and Brazil followed. He returned stateside with a posting to Miami in 1971, his son said, and then Orlando several years later.

As a journalist, Flores “had the ability to draw people out and make them feel like that it was important what they were saying,” his son said.

Flores initially thought the Orlando posting would be an opportunity to take advantage of a slower news pace, the chance to do more writing and less fast-breaking news, Michael Flores said. That was soon proven untrue; Orlando became a popular tourist destination thanks to Walt Disney World. And with the Kennedy Space Center not that far away, the Space Shuttle program also became something to report on.

He also spent time covering high-profile events like the trial and conviction of serial killer Ted Bundy and his subsequent execution.

“So what was supposed to be a quiet assignment turned out not to be, and he wrote some great stuff there,” Michael Flores said.

He said his father retired from the AP in 1996, but not from writing. He went on to publish seven books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Flores “lived a great life,” his son said. “He really did. I mean, if there’s a blueprint for living a good life, it would be his to follow.”