Ramiro Valdes, a longtime associate of Fidel Castro and celebrated as a hero of the Cuban Revolution, died at the age of 94, according to President Miguel Díaz‑Canel’s social media post on Sunday.
The president did not disclose the cause of death.
After the 1959 revolutionary victory, Valdes served as a senior government official for decades, holding the honorary titles of Hero of the Republic and Commander of the Revolution, and was a member of the Cuban Communist Party’s Political Bureau until 2019.
Díaz‑Canel expressed that Valdes’ passing “hurts deeply, like the loss of a father.”
He concluded with the slogan “Until victory, always, Commander!”
Born on April 28, 1932, Valdes was only 21 when he joined Fidel Castro in the assault on the Moncada barracks, marking the 1953 uprising against President Fulgencio Batista.
After exile in Mexico, he was among the 82 men aboard the Granma yacht in 1956, one of only 12 who survived; among the survivors were Castro, who died in 2016, his brother and eventual Communist Party leader Raúl Castro, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary killed in Bolivia in 1967.
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