Mario Chanes de Armas

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Mario Chanes de Armas (1927 - 2007) was a former Cuban revolutionary and ally of Fidel Castro, but ended up being labeled an enemy of the regime and sent to prison.

Together with Fidel Castro he fought the Cuban president Fulgencio Batista. They had, amongst other things, tried to storm the Moncada barracks in stolen soldiers' uniforms. Together, they served their time in Batista's New Model Prison on the Isle of Pines. They were photographed leaving the jail 22 months later, the result of an unexpected amnesty, waving arms and hats.

Chanes de Armas was one of a number of revolutionaries closely aligned to Castro during the battle against Batista, that felt that the influence of the Communist party of Cuba was threatening to betray Castro's initial promises of constitutional reform.^[1] As Castro continued to reject calls for elections in the months after the revolution, opining that they would usher in a return to "the old discredited system of corrupt parties and fraudulent balloting which marked the Batista era",^[2] Chanes de Armas became increasingly active in the opposition movement against the new government. For these activities he was sentenced and imprisoned on charges of "counter-revolution".

According to an obituary in The Economist^[3]:

"In 1961 he returned to the Isle of Pines. His crime was “counter-revolution”. He was said to have tried to assassinate Mr Castro, but he denied that he had ever been enlisted. The falling-out was personal and ideological. His face had now been airbrushed out of the photographs in which he smiled as Fidel's friend.

Prison was much less comfortable than before. That spring the Isle of Pines had been sown with dynamite, linked up to the wiring system in the prison, so that any American attempt to rescue the prisoners would blow them to smithereens. It was, Mr Chanes de Armas remembered, “like sleeping on a powder keg”. Prisoners—in 1961, around 6,000 of them—were meant to submit to communist “re-education”; he became the leader of those who resisted. He refused to wear the blue uniform of a common criminal, instead going naked or in underpants. He took part in forced labour as slowly as he could, digging ditches or chopping up blocks of marble in the fierce, dripping Cuban heat. For weeks at a time he was put in tapiadas, steel isolation cells, and gavetas, “drawers”, so narrow that he could only stand. He and his followers were called plantados, planted squarely—though sparsely—as trees across Mr Castro's path.

He was in prison for one day short of 30 years."

It's been argued that Chanes de Armas was imprisoned longer than any political prisoner anywhere.^[4] In 1993 he was permitted to leave for Miami. He died on February 24th 2007, aged 80. In a number of respects his life story resembles that of Gustavo Arcos - another Moncada veteran. [1].^[5]

[edit] References and footnotes

^ Mario Chanes de Armas, 80, Dies; Jailed by Castro. New York Times (27). Retrieved on 5, 2007.
^ The Political End of President Urrutia. Fidel Castro, by Robert E. Quirk 1993. Accessed 8th October. 2006.
^ Obituary: Mario Chanes de Armas. The Economist. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
^ Life goes on - for man and country. Miami Herald. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
^ de La Cova, Antonio Rafael 2007 The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution. University of South Carolina Press ISBN-10 1570036721 ISBN-13 978-1570036729