ESQUENAZI-MAYO, Roberto 1920-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 22, 1920, in Havana, Cuba; died December 25, 2004, in Washington, DC. Editor, educator, and author. The founding editor of Life en Español, Esquenazi-Mayo was a former professor of Spanish, Latin-American, and international studies. He attended the University of Havana for two years before immigrating to the United States in 1941. In 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A. Wounded while parachuting into France during the D-Day invasion, his military service earned him decorations from Spain, France, Venezuela, and the United States, including the Purple Heart. Returning to America, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he completed his undergraduate and doctoral work in Spanish and literature. Esquenazi-Mayo taught Spanish at Columbia from 1947 to 1949. He then turned to editing, first for the Spanish edition of Americas from 1950 until 1951, and then as founding editor of Life en Español from 1952 until 1958. Returning to academia, he taught again at Columbia before joining the University of Nebraska—Lincoln faculty in 1961. Here he served twice as chair of the Romance languages department during the 1960s, as well as directing the Institute of International Studies and contributing to the editing of the Library of Congress's Handbook of Latin American Studies. Esquenazi-Mayo left Nebraska in 1985 and went into semi-retirement. It was hardly a retirement, though, since he was still active as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Latin American studies department. He retired for good in 2001. Esquenazi-Mayo was the author of several books in Spanish, including his autobiographical Memorias de un estudiante soldado (1954), and he edited or co-edited such surveys as Latin-American Scholarship since World War Two (1972) and A Survey of Cuban Revistas, 1902-1958 (1993).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Washington Post, January 22, 2005, p. B6.