A three-decade veteran diplomat of the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo, Porfirio Rubirosa was famous for his lavish lifestyle and five marriages. His wives included Trujillo’s daughter Flor de Oro (“Flower of Gold”), two actresses, and two American heiresses who also happened to be the richest women in the world at the time, Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton. No doubt justified by his diplomatic role, Rubirosa’s decision to drop by a celebratory cocktail reception at the Presidential Palace in early 1959 surely caught revolutionaries by surprise, including an awkwardly framed Fidel Castro. Havana, January 1959. Andrew St. George Collection, Smathers Library, University of Florida.
