how does it feel to fight for something but have the tables turned on you this way?
===Revolutionary who paid for defying Castro
By Phil Davison
Published: March 3 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 3 2007 02:00
Mario Chanes de Armas, who has died in Miami at the age of 80, sailed from Mexico to Cuba in 1956 with Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara to launch the Cuban revolution. Two years after the revolution's success, he criticised Mr Castro's lurch towards communism and was jailed by his former comrade for 30 years.
Chanes de Armas spent six years of his incarceration in -solitary confinement in a windowless cell, making him the longest-serving political prisoner in the western hemisphere at the time.
In an effort to keep his release quiet, Mr Castro let him go the day before his 30-year term was completed. On his release, he went to the grave of his only son Mario, who had been born soon after his father was jailed and who had died aged 22. Chanes had not been allowed to attend the funeral because he refused to sign up to "re-education".
Although he had fought at every stage of the revolution, Chanes was stricken from Cuba's history books by Mr Castro himself.
Mario Chanes de Armas was born in Havana in 1926. After Fulgencio Batista's 1952 coup, he joined the pro-democracy underground and met Mr Castro, then a bearded law student who was impressed by Chanes' leadership qualities.
In 1956 Mr Castro, Chanes and Guevara sailed to Cuba. Acting on a tip, Batista's forces attacked them; Castro escaped and Chanes went underground. Caught while smuggling dynamite, he was jailed and remained so when Batista fled the country in 1959. Supporters freed Chanes, who greeted Castro when he led his guerrillas into the capital.
As Castro became pro-Communist, however, the illusions of Chanes and many others were shattered.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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