Cuban Gen. del Valle dies
By: Associated Press | ∞
HAVANA -- Gen. Sergio del Valle Jimenez, a doctor in Fidel Castro's rebel army in the late 1950s and army chief of staff during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, has died, state media reported Friday.
A short article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma did not give a cause for del Valle's death late Thursday or say how old he was, but he was at least in his 70s.
Del Valle joined Castro's revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista through a Havana underground movement in the mid-1950s, and entered the rebel army as a physician and soldier fighting against Batista's troops in eastern Cuba in 1957.
After Batista fled and the rebels took control of the island on Jan. 1, 1959, del Valle held various positions in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
He was army chief of staff when a U.S.-backed exile army tried unsuccessfully to invade the Bay of Pigs in 1961, as well as the following year when the U.S. discovery of Soviet missiles on the island pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. The Soviets eventually removed the missiles.
Del Valle was also interior minister in the late 1960s and health minister from 1979 to 1986.
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