People of the Revolution and the USSR

Cuba state institutions Communism 1923–2019

Cuban revolutionary commander credited with defeating the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing (Brigade 2506)

During the Bay of Pigs invasion of 17 April 1961, Fidel Castro ordered him to command the militia and regular-army battalions fighting Brigade 2506; late on 19 April 1961 he was among the forces that broke through to Playa Girón and forced the invaders' surrender.

Cuban Communist and military leader, and later vice-president of the Council of Ministers. Born in Santiago de Cuba, he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) after the 1959 revolution and held many state posts, including minister, vice-president and deputy. He was among the longest-lived historic leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba state institutions Communism 1926–2016 ○ Natural causes

Leader of the hemisphere's first socialist revolution: forty-seven years against imperialism

“History will absolve me.” — courtroom speech after Moncada, 1953

Leader of Latin America's first successful socialist revolution. He opened the struggle against the Batista dictatorship with the 1953 Moncada attack, seized power through guerrilla war in 1959, and defended socialist Cuba for forty-seven years against US blockade and pressure.

26th of July Movement Communism 1928–1967 ✕ Executed

The internationalist icon who traded a stethoscope for a rifle

“Create two, three, many Vietnams.” — Message to the Tricontinental, 1967

Argentine Marxist revolutionary. As a guerrilla comandante of the Cuban Revolution, he played a key role in overthrowing the Batista regime in 1959. He then devoted himself to the international revolutionary struggle, leading guerrilla campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967.

Cuba state institutions Communism 1930–1989 ✕ Executed by firing squad

Cuban general of the African expeditionary campaigns

As commander of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia from 1977, he directed the Jijiga counter-offensive that, with Soviet military advisers, broke the Somali army. Sources date the recapture of Jijiga to 4 or 5 March 1978.

Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez (1930–1989) was a divisional general of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and a Hero of the Republic of Cuba. Born in Cacocum, he joined Column 2 under Camilo Cienfuegos in 1958 and fought in the Sierra Maestra, helped defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion, and sat on the Communist Party of Cuba's Central Committee for more than twenty years. He fought against the FNLA in Luanda in 1975 and in 1977 took command of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia during the Ogaden War. Awarded the Hero title in 1984, he was convicted of drug trafficking and treason in 1989 and executed by firing squad on 13 July. Sources give his second given name as Tomás or Teodomiro and his age at death as 58–59 or 57.

Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Communism 1931–

From Moncada to the presidency: the Revolution's indispensable number two for over half a century

“Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together, each in his own place.” — speech to university students, 2006

Core commander of the Cuban Revolution: a founding member of the 26th of July Movement who fought at Moncada (1953), survived the Granma landing to reach the Sierra Maestra, and as Comandante of the Frank País Eastern Front built a guerrilla proto-state in Oriente. As minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008 (the longest-serving defense minister of any modern state), he forged Cuba's military and security apparatus and led the institutionalization of the Communist Party. Succeeding Fidel as president in 2008 and party first secretary in 2011, he oversaw cautious market reforms while preserving one-party rule, stepping down in 2018 and 2021 after more than half a century as the Revolution's indispensable number two.