) was an eminent cardiologist. She was the wife of the Foreign Minister of Cuba

Foreign relations of Cuba

Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been down sized as a result of economic hardship after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Without massive Soviet subsidies and its primary trading partner Cuba was comparatively isolated in the 1990s, but has since entered bilateral co-operation with several...

, Raúl Roa García

Raúl Roa García

Raúl Roa García was a Cuban intellectual, politician and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. He was a lawyer and was also a university professor in the 1940s and 1950s...

, and mother to the Cuban diplomat, Raúl Roa Kouri.

Kouri was the eldest daughter of seven children of the prominent surgeon and Professor of Medicine at the University of Havana, Dr. Juan Bautista Kouri Esmeja and Dr. Josefina Barreto. Her siblings were Josefina, Marta Alicia, Silvia Margarita, Juan, Julio and Nejhie Kouri-Barreto.

As a young woman she was a militant of the Student Left Wing (Ala Izquierda Estudiantil) and after the March 1935 strike she joined her husband in exile in New York. After March 10, 1952, she took part in the anti-Batista movement as a physician, caring for clandestine combatants and other tasks of Civic Resistance.

During the first years of the Revolution she was the director of the Hygiene Institute. An eminent cardiologist, she was a founder in the field where she worked tirelessly until the age of 75. A member of the Federation of Cuban Women

Federation of Cuban Women

The Federation of Cuban Women was established in 1960 under the revolutionary government with Vilma Espín as its president. Espin fought in the Sierra Maestras with Fidel Castro and Raul Castro and married Raul in 1959. She was the president of the FMC till her death in 2007. From its inception...

 Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC), the Milicias Nacionales Revolucionarias and Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR).

She died in Rome where she was accompanying her son Raúl Roa Kouri at the Cuban Embassy to the Holy See

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

, victim of a cardiac-respiratory arrest at the age of 88.