Ronald Hilton, professor emeritus of Romance languages, was a proud workaholic. Well into his 90s, Hilton would wake at 3 a.m. and listen first to the Russian news out of Moscow, then the German news out of Berlin, and finally the French news out of Paris. In 1960, his avidity for international affairs found him on a research trip to Guatemala, where he learned that Cuban exiles were training for a secret mission. His report blew the whistle on a CIA attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Hilton, a pioneer in Latin American studies, died February 20. He was 95.
Hilton was born in Torquay, England, and thrived under the tutorial system at Oxford University. In 1944, he came to Stanford and established the Institute of Hispanic American and Luso-Brazilian Studies and its Hispanic American Report, a journal that filled a void in coverage of Central and South America. In that journal, which became a source for a report in The Nation, Hilton described the Bay of Pigs preparations.
After the outspoken Hilton resigned from the Hispanic American Studies Program in 1964, he made his focus more global. He founded the California Institute of International Studies—later renamed the World Association of International Studies—and began publishing the quarterly World Affairs Report.
He taught himself Russian—and, his daughter Mary Hilton Huyck says, sounded so much like a native speaker that he once was scolded for eating in the foreigners’ section of a Soviet restaurant.
His daughter says that one of his proudest accomplishments at Stanford was founding Bolívar House, now home to the Center for Latin American Studies.
Hilton is survived by his wife, Mary Bowie Hilton; his daughter; and three grandchildren.
