Cuba, September 12: One of the original leaders of the Cuban revolution and current vice president Juan Almeida has died of heart failure at the age of 82, state-run press said on Saturday.
Almeida was at the side of Fidel and Raul Castro from the earliest days of the revolution and was the only black commander in the leadership.
Fidel Castro took power after the rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959, and ruled until Raul Castro succeeded him as president last year.
Almeida served in top positions from the beginning of the revolutionary government and at his death was one of several vice presidents in the Council of State under Raul Castro and a member of the powerful political bureau of the ruling Communist Party.
Many of Cuba’s top leaders are about the same age as Almeida, which has raised questions about who will succeed the Castros. Raul Castro is 78, while Fidel Castro is 83.
The construction worker from a humble Havana neighborhood participated in the ill-fated July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba that began the uprising.
He and the Castros were imprisoned after the attack, then following a pardon by Batista, were released and went to Mexico in 1956 to regroup and train for the fight against Batista.
He was on the yacht Granma when it carried the small rebel fighting force from Mexico to Cuba in late 1956 and fought in the Sierra Maestra mountains that were the rebel base.
The government declared Sunday a day of national mourning for Almeida.
“The name of Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque will remain always in the hearts and minds of his compatriots,” the political bureau said in a note published in Communist Party newspaper Granma.
He was to be buried in the Sierra Maestra, the newspaper said.
—-Agencies