Ramiro Valdes, lauded as hero of Cuban revolution, dies at 94

June 21 - Ramiro Valdes, one of Fidel Castro's earliest collaborators who was lauded at home as a hero of the Cuban revolution, has died at the age of 94, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on social media on Sunday.

The president did not provide a cause of death.

A top government official for decades after Castro's rebels came to power in 1959, Valdes held the honorary titles "Hero of the Republic" and "Commander of the Revolution" and formed part of the powerful Political Bureau of the ruling Cuban Communist Party until 2019.

In a post on X, Diaz-Canel said that Valdes' death "hurts deeply, like that of a father."

"Until victory, always, Commander!" the Cuban president added.

Born on April 28, 1932, Valdes was just 21 when he fought alongside Fidel Castro at the assault on the Moncada barracks that launched the 1953 uprising against the government of Fulgencio Batista.

Exiled with Castro in Mexico, he was one of 82 men who sailed the yacht Granma to Cuba in 1956 to restart the insurrection - and one of only 12 to survive.

Those included Castro, who died in 2016, his younger brother and later president and head of the Communist Party Raul Castro, and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who was shot in Bolivia in 1967 while attempting to start an insurrection there.

Valdes joined the Castro brothers in the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba, serving as Guevara's deputy commander. He fought alongside Guevara in the decisive Battle of Santa Clara in the final days before Batista fled the country on January 1, 1959.

He then headed the security agency created after Fidel Castro took power.

Valdes shared some of the charisma exhibited by Castro and Guevara, and like them he wore olive-green fatigues in the corridors of power. Until the end he kept the Leon Trotsky-style goatee that he had worn from his early days in the revolution. As a fitness fanatic, he maintained an exercise program well into his 80s.

Among the positions he held over the years were interior minister, vice minister of defense, minister of information and communications, and vice president.

Even as Raul Castro sought to oversee the handover of power from his so-called "historic generation" to younger leaders, passing on the presidency that he inherited from his brother to 60-year-old Diaz-Canel in 2018, Valdes remained in key government positions, most recently as deputy prime minister with a focus on the island's energy crisis.

Still actively involved with the minutiae of the island's regular electricity shortages, he regularly appeared in military garb alongside Diaz-Canel encouraging Cubans to turn off the lights, cut back on demand and maintain their "revolutionary" fervor.

Valdes always remained loyal to the revolution, its leaders and one-party system, including during the country's most difficult periods.

"We cannot forget we arrived here thanks to the unity of the people and their trust in the revolution," Valdes said at the 61st anniversary celebration of the Moncada attack in 2014.

"We must preserve this unity above all things because we are aware this fight has not ended." REUTERS