Camilo Cienguegos: early victim of Fidel Castro’s megalomania?

[TomSea]

Just in case you did not know this, Cienfuegos was about as big of a deal in the day as Castro or Che as the article infers and he went down in a plane crash, what the headline is about.  So, for recent Cuban history, an important figure.

Camilo Cienguegos: early victim of Fidel Castro’s megalomania?
October 29, 2019 by Carlos Eire


From our Bureau of Suspicious Deaths in Castrogonia

Yesterday, Oct. 28, marked the 60th anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos, who had fought alongside Fidel, Raul, and Che since 1956, and who rivaled Fidel and Che for adulation and popularity in the early months of the Castro takeover of Cuba.

Make no mistake about it, back in 1959, Raul was neither beloved nor popular. The three top heroes, the Holy Trinity of the so-called Revolution were Fidel, Che, and Camilo.

In 1959 Raul “el lampiño” (the beardless) was their court jester, the laughingstock of the so-called Revolution, the butt of countless jokes due to his lack of facial hair and high-pitched voice, a pony-tailed “mariquita” who was rumored to be a full-blown “maricón” with sadistic tendencies.



Read more at: https://babalublog.com/2019/10/29/camilo-cienguegos-early-victim-of-fidel-castros-megalomania/

I have known about this episode but never saw it really discussed as this article does.

[PeteS in CA]

Sounds like a question unlikely, at this remove, to ever be answered. Historically, Lenin and Stalin first purged other Marxist parties - e.g. the Mensheviks and SRs. Then Stalin, in the early 30s, purged "Old Bolsheviks" who might have enough of a following to become a threat to him. So it would not be unprecedented in Communist history for the Castros to have purged a competitor within party leadership.

For that matter, I sometimes wonder - based on zero information - whether shuffling Che' off to foment revolution in South America might at least in part have been exiling Che' to a hopeless cause and eventual death. Not that I've ever had any sympathy or liking for Che' or the Castros.