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

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 social media, Diaz-Canel said 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.