Matos wasnot in favorof Castro’sleadership
Published 12:00 am Friday, February 28, 2014
MIAMI — Huber Matos, a former Fidel Castro commander who later broke with the Cuban revolution and served two decades in prison before going into exile, died in Miami early Thursday. He was 95.
The cause of death was a “massive heart attack,” according to a lengthy statement released by the family shortly after his death at 4 a.m.
Matos had been taken to Kendall Regional Hospital Tuesday and the next day asked to be disconnected from an oxygen system, so he could “say farewell to his wife Maria Luisa Araluce, his children and grandchildren,” the family statement said.
Later Wednesday, Matos took calls from supporters in Cuba, including a group of activists who sang the Cuban national anthem over the phone, the statement said. It added: “His last words were ‘The struggle continues; long live a free Cuba.’”
Matos’ death closes one of the most significant chapters in Cuban history. Matos, a schoolteacher, joined the Castro revolution against Fulgencio Batista and helped provide weapons to rebels by staging supply flights from abroad.
Matos also embodied the widespread disillusion that many Cubans felt toward Castro when it became clear that the revolution was turning toward communism. In 1961, three years after Batista fled Cuba, Castro openly acknowledged the “socialist character” of the revolution.