In Kingston as of 1983 he became deeply involved in the negotiations around the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,[1] the first step in a long career as a UN-related diplomat.
He established close personal connections within Cuban society, while engaging the authorities and seeking common ground on sensitive political issues.
In 2000 he took up UN diplomacy again (2000–2003), and after an intermediary posting as consul general in Atlanta, Georgia, returned to Kingston, Jamaica, in 2004 as ambassador to the entire Anglophone Caribbean island region, as well as to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
His work was mostly economic in Jamaica, chiefly helping to rebuild a public transportation system and infrastructure in Kingston, and politico-military in Haiti, monitoring the UN peacekeeping and institution-building efforts.
[9] His commercial debut followed in Dutch in 1984 with the novella Het Anagram van de Wereld, a conte philosophique set in an exotic brothel.
Portocarero's work was initially praised as an example of postmodernism and structuralism, but he gradually moved away from overly intellectual writing to reach a wider audience with straightforward storytelling and journalism.
Cuba also took center stage in his next book, Trance Atlantico (2001), an occult detective story based on an impressive African sculpture, setting in motion intrigues in a triangle between Havana, the Congo, and Brussels.
In his Diplomacy & Adventure memoir, he states that his writer's credo is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's, in the sense that you have to live first to have stories to tell.