Huber Matos, a top commander in Fidel Castro’s
army who broke from the Cuban revolution in 1959 over its tilt toward
Communism, endured a harsh imprisonment for 20 years and became a leader
of anti-Castro exiles in Florida, died in Miami on Thursday. He was 95. The cause was a heart attack, his family said.
A longtime opponent of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista,
Mr. Matos, a former country schoolteacher, was one of a handful of men
in the inner circle of Castro’s revolutionary organization, the 26th of
July Movement.
In
1958 he traveled to Costa Rica and organized a large and crucial
delivery of weapons to Cuban rebels in the Sierra Maestra. A year later
he helped capture Havana, entering the city by Mr. Castro’s side, and he
was named military commander of Camagüey Province.
But
as Mr. Castro moved covertly toward Marxism in his first year in power,
Mr. Matos expressed displeasure with the shift and, as he recounted in
his autobiography, “How the Night Arrived,” appealed to Mr. Castro to
stay true to the goals of the revolution, including re-establishing
democratic government.
Increasingly disillusioned, Mr. Matos sent a letter of resignation to
Mr. Castro alleging Communist infiltration in the government. In
response, in October 1959, Mr. Castro ordered his arrest, a directive
carried out by Camilo Cienfuegos, a central figure in the revolutionary
movement. (Days later, Mr. Cienfuegos was presumed dead when a plane
carrying him to Havana from Camagüey disappeared over the ocean.)
Some speculate Fidel had Cienfuegos killed.
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