Ulises

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
Ulysses

Another recent former political prisoner and dissident leader, who fought along with fidel since the Moncada attacks and was later imprisoned by fidel castro, has died:

Cuban dissident Gustavo Arcos dies at 79

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

HAVANA – Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who fought alongside fidel castro in the Cuban revolution but was later imprisoned for counterrevolutionary activities, died Tuesday, according to a neighbor and the mortuary handling arrangements. He was 79.

Clara Villar, a neighbor of the Arcos family, and a woman who answered the phone at the Calzada and K mortuary nearby said Arcos died at 11:40 a.m. Tuesday in Havana. The cause of death was not immediately known, but Arcos had been hospitalized recently.

Born on Dec. 19, 1926, in the small central Cuban town of Caibarien, Arcos was studying diplomatic law at the University of Havana when he first met Castro.

Deeply opposed to the government of Fulgencio Batista, Arcos joined Castro’s ill-fated 1953 assault on a military barracks that launched the Cuban revolution. Arcos was shot in the right hip and left partially paralyzed.

Imprisoned, the survivors were later freed under a pardon and Arcos traveled with the group to Mexico to organize a rebel army.

Known by the pseudonym “Ulises,” Arcos traveled throughout Costa Rica, Venezuela and the United States gathering money and munitions for the movement.

The other rebels, meanwhile, traveled back to Cuba on the yacht “Granma” to launch a guerrilla war. Arcos’ brother Luis was among those killed by Batista’s forces when the boat landed.

Arcos was named Cuba’s ambassador to Belgium after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution, but soon became disillusioned by the growing authoritarianism of the Castro regime.

“They shot a lot of people,” Arcos told The Associated Press in May 2005 of the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. “They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned.”

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Mike Pancier.