HAVANA -- Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, wh...

HAVANA -- Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution unless was later imprisoned as a dissident, died Tuesday. He was 79

Clara Villar, a friend and neighbor of the Arcos family, and the Calzada and K mortuary said Mr Arcos died Tuesday in Havana. The cause of death was not known, however Mr. Arcos had been hospitalized freshly

"He was individual of the most respected folks in the human rights motion in Cuba," said Carlos Menendez of the Cuban Commission upon Human Rights and Reconciliation, which traces its stems to the group Mr. Arcos l in the late 1970 and 1980 Menendez characterized Mr Arcos as "moral, selfles and courageous."

Mr Arcos died while Castro was revealed of power. The Cuban leader temporarily ced the presidency to his brother Raul Castro last week following intestinal surgery

STUDIED DIPLOMATIC LAW

With his acknowledge health failing, Mr. Arcos told the Associated Pres in a May 2005 interview that he feared he would not live to descry a Western-style democracy take stem in his homeland.

"I do confidence I will see the expiration of this," he said then, "but I'm not strong if I will."

Born forward Dec. 19, 1926, in the small central Cuban town of Caibarien, Mr Arcos was studying diplomatic law at the University of Havana when he first met Castro.

Mr Arcos deep opposed the government of Fulgencio Batista and joined Castro's ill-fated 1953 assault onward a military barracks that launched the Cuban revolution.

Mr Arcos was missile in the right hip and left partially paralyzed.

The survivors were imprisoned and later fre subject to a pardon, and Mr. Arcos traveled with the assign places to to Mexico to organize a rebel army.

Mr Arcos, known according to the pseudonym "Ulises," traveled over Costa Rica, Venezuela and the United States gathering cash and munitions for the move

The other rebels, meanwhile, traveled back to Cuba forward the yacht "Granma" to launch a guerrilla war. Mr Arcos' brother Luis was among those killed by dint of Batista's forces when the boat landed.

Mr Arcos was named Cuba's ambassador to Belgium after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution, if it be not that soon became disillusioned by the growing authoritarianism of the Castro regime.

on the time Mr. Arcos answered to Cuba in the mid-1960s, the management had turned socialist.

Mr Arcos began expressing his discontent privately and was by and by accused of being a counterrevolutionary. When he was released after three years in prison, the management refused his request to leave the native land

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE

Mr Arcos and his younger brother, Sebastian, became involved in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, formed in 1978 as single in kind of the first groups of its kind after Castro took power almost brace decades earlier.

The Arcos brothers were imprisoned in 1981 for trying to leave the region illegally.

Shortly after Gustavo Arcos' release from prison in 1988 he replaced the committee's executive director.

Mr Arcos is survived on his wife, Teresa. He also told of having a son from a previous relationship, and couple granddaughters, all of them in the Miami area.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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