| Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán (February 6, 1932 - October 28, 1959) was a
Cuban revolutionary born in Havana.
Camilo Cienfuegos was active in underground activities against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and played an important role in the Cuban Revolution. He was one of the revolution's four major figures, together with Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and
Che Guevara.
He did not participate in the 1953 attack on the Moncada
Barracks, and during the revolution led the so-called second column (Antonio Maceo) of the rebel forces together with Che
Guevara. After the revolution's victory, Cienfuegos served in the Army's high command, fought counter-revolutionary uprisings,
and played an important role instituting agrarian reforms.
There has been debate as to Cienfuegos's political leanings. While many claim that he was anti-Communist, Cuban author and
historian Carlos Franqui suggests otherwise in his book Family Portrait
With Fidel. Franqui, one of Cienfuegos's closest friends during the Cuban revolution, asserts that Cienfuegos "sympathized
with socialism" and that he followed Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara
politically. Other sources tend to agree with Franqui, though it is clear that Cienfuegos was not a hard-line Soviet Communist.
Cienfuegos's involvement in agrarian reform and worker's congresses in the early days of the revolution must be noted, as must
also the fact that both his father and his brother Osmani were (and, in Osmani's case, are) radical leftists.
Death
Supposedly, Camilo Cienfuegos died on October 28, 1959, in a Cessna accident due to bad weather.
However, it is often claimed, especially amongst the Cuban exile community in United States, that Castro ordered his plane to be shot down by a Cuban Air Force
Hawker Sea Fury fighter flown by Castro's personal pilot, and that
the weather was perfect on the night of his death.
According to Roberto
Cardenas, a Captain in the Cuban Air Force, Cienfuegos was shot down because he refused to countenance the incarceration of Huber Matos, a commander who had attempted a
coup de etat because of his opposition to the Sovietization of Cuba.
Fidel Castro steadfastly denies these claims.
Quotes
- "The rebel army is the people in uniform."
|
