Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Cuban revolutionary commander and anti-Castro activist, dies at 77

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Cuban revolutionary commander and anti-Castro
activist, dies at 77

Published: October 26, 2012
By JUAN O. TAMAYO — The Miami Herald

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, who fought against the Batista dictatorship in
Cuba, then spent 22 years in prison for fighting the Fidel Castro
dictatorship and finally returned to the island for a controversial
attempt at dialogue, died Friday in Havana.

Gutierrez Menoyo, 77, suffered from an inoperable aneurysm and died at
the Hermanos Amejeiras Hospital, said his longtime friend Max Lesnik, a
Miami radio commentator visiting Havana at the time.

In his last commentary on Cuba, dictated to a daughter when he knew he
was dying, the controversial fighter defended his history and wrote that
the Castro revolution, while it was initially "marked by poetry," had
now "run out of steam."

"I served Cuba in different stages, beyond the errors of my
authenticity, of any lack of vision on my part or of any stubbornness on
the road," he wrote. "If I offended anyone . . . I ask for benevolence,
just as I forget those who may have judged me too quickly."

Gutierrez Menoyo's daughter Patricia wrote that her father "died where
he wanted to and where he had to be."

Gutierrez Menoyo was born in 1934 to a family of militant Madrid
socialists. An older brother died fighting for the Republican side in
the Spanish Civil War, and the family moved to Cuba one year after the
end of World War II.

Another brother, Carlos, died leading a failed attack on the
presidential palace in Havana to oust dictator Fulgencio Batista in
1957. Gutierrez Menoyo was part of the attack group, but he escaped.

Seven months later, he founded the Second National Front of the
Escambray mountains in central Cuba, a guerrilla force independent of
Castro's rebels in the Sierra Maestra to the east that eventually
gathered 300 fighters. Among them were Lesnik and William Morgan, a U.S.
citizen executed by Castro in 1961.

Olga Morgan, the widow of William Morgan and herself a veteran of the
Escambray fighting, praised Gutierrez Menoyo as "a leader who was not a
leader, but a brother." As for his policies, she added, "each person
takes their own road."

"He felt he was Cuban. He fought for Cuba, and his wish was to be buried
in Cuba," added Jorge Castellon, a Miami exile who also fought alongside
Gutierrez Menoyo in the Second Front.

Gutierrez Menoyo, who retained a strong Madrid accent throughout his
life, was awarded the rank of comandante after Batista fled Cuba on Jan.
1, 1959. But within months he was criticizing Castro's slide toward
communism. He escaped to Miami in 1961 and became chief of military
operations of Alpha 66, an exile group that staged armed attacks against
Cuba.

Returning to Cuba for a raid in late 1964, he was captured four weeks
later. Lore has it that Castro told him, "I knew you would come, but I
also knew that I would catch you."

He was sentenced to death after a 30-minute trial, but that was later
reduced to 30 years.

Prison guards once beat him so badly, for refusing to wear the uniform
of common prisoners, that he lost sight and hearing on his left side.
And in 1970, he was sentenced to 25 more years for organizing an
opposition movement from his cell.

Castro refused to include him among the 3,600 political prisoners freed
following his controversial 1978-1979 dialogue with exiles, which
Gutierrez Menoyo criticized as focusing too much on the prisoners and
not enough on Cuba's need for democracy.

He was finally freed in 1986, after serving 22 years in prison,
following the intercession of Spain's socialist Prime Minister Felipe
Gonzalez. Flown initially to Spain, he returned in 1987 to a warm
welcome in Miami.

But his founding of Cambio Cubano, which advocated negotiations with
Castro, began to dim his image. While radical exiles branded him as a
"dialoguero," Castro sent most of Cambio Cubano's leaders to prison.

"Menoyo was a valiant fighter, but soft on his principles," said Huber
Matos, a former comandante of the Castro revolution who served 20 years
in Cuban prisons and now lives in Miami. "Too flexible. He did not know
how to maintain a firm position."

Gutierrez Menoyo began returning to Cuba in the mid-1990s to take part
in conferences between the government and largely sympathetic exiles,
mostly to discuss migration issues, though he often spoke out on the
need for political reforms.

During one visit in 2003, he announced that he was staying, claiming his
right as a Cuban citizen.

The government allowed him to stay, but never gave him legal residence
and he acknowledged in 2008 that he was living off cash sent by
supporters abroad.

His political views drew little if any support from either domestic
dissidents or exiles abroad, and a U.S. diplomatic cable from Havana
published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks in 2007 described him
as a "one-man dissident organization."

He is survived by his wife, Gladys Teresa Martinez, and their three
sons, all living in Miami, and Patricia Gutierrez Menoyo, a daughter
from a first marriage who lives in Puerto Rico.

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