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By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, March
12 (Reuters) - Manuel "Red Beard'' Pineiro Losada, a legendary figure in
the Cuban intelligence services who once directed efforts to "export
revolution'' to the rest of Latin America, was buried on Thursday.
Pineiro, who was 64, died in a hospital early on Thursday after being
injured in a car accident following a reception at the Mexican ambassador's
residence in Havana.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, Vice-President Carlos Lage and other senior
government and Communist Party figures joined Pineiro's family at Havana's Colon
Cemetery, where the dead official's body was buried with full military honors in
the mausoleum reserved for Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Three volleys of shots were fired as a military band played the Cuban
national anthem, followed by a funeral lament sounded by a single bugle.
The funeral tribute was read by General Samuel Rodiles Planas, a former
comrade-in-arms of Pineiro during the guerrilla war fought by Fidel Castro's
forces, which toppled right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1959 Cuban
Revolution.
Rodiles recalled Pineiro's long career in the Cuban military, security
services and Communist Party.
"With the death of comrade Manuel Pineiro Losada, our party has lost an
active militant and the Revolution has lost one of its veteran soldiers,'' he
said.
Family members said Pineiro, who had attended a farewell reception for the
departing Mexican ambassador, had crashed the car he was driving after
apparently fainting at the wheel. He was rushed to hospital but died about two
hours later.
Pineiro, who held the title "Commander of the Revolution'' like other
veterans of the Cuban guerrilla movement, was a close associate of both Fidel
Castro and his brother, Armed Forces Minister General Raul Castro, under whom he
had served.
Nicknamed "Barba Roja'' because of his luxuriant red beard, which
turned white as he grew older, he later rose to become one of the most
influential and notorious figures in Cuba's intelligence services.
After the 1959 Revolution, Pineiro, who had studied at Columbia University
in New York in the late 1950s, was promoted to be head of G-2, the Cuban
revolutionary government's security and intelligence section, with the rank of
Deputy Interior Minister.
He was switched from that job in 1968 and was subsequently made head of the
Americas Department of the Central Committee of Cuba's ruling Communist Party.
This powerful post effectively put him in charge, under Castro, of Cuban
policy in North and South America at a time when Cuba was actively seeking to "export''
its revolution to Latin America and other parts of the world.
U.S. intelligence officials identified him as a key figure in Cuban support
for national liberation movements across the world, but especially in Latin
America, where Cuba actively backed left-wing guerrilla movements in Chile,
Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Pineiro was also closely associated with the abortive guerrilla expeditions
of Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che'' Guevara in the Congo and
Bolivia, where Guevara was killed by the Bolivian army in 1967.
His political influence appeared to have waned since the early 1990s, when
Castro, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, made clear that Cuba was no
longer following a policy of "exporting revolution'' but was concentrating
instead of saving its own home-grown revolution. REUTERS
19:27 03-12-98 |