The Cuban government decreed a day of Official Mourning for Tuesday, June 23, following the death of Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, a founding figure of the Cuban Revolution who passed away on Sunday at age 98.

The mourning period runs from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight on Tuesday, in compliance with constitutional provisions, according to an official announcement published by the newspaper Granma.

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Valdés Menéndez was one of the most prominent historical figures of the revolutionary process. He participated in the July 26, 1953 assaults on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, an action that launched the revolutionary movement against the Batista dictatorship. Influenced from youth by the ideals of José Martí and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, transmitted by his mother, he later became a political prisoner on the Isle of Pines, lived in exile in Mexico, returned as a Granma expeditionary, and served as second-in-command of Column No. 8 under Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

The revolutionary leader is deeply etched in Cuban collective memory.

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