“We have lost a great Cuban and fighting brother,” lamented Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat.
MIAMI, United States. – Humberto Díaz Argüelles (known as El Chino Argüelles), veteran of the Brigade 2506former president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association and member of the Secretariat of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC), died last Saturday in Miami.
The ARC, in a text released after his death, stressed that it “always” maintained its support for the freedom of Cuban political prisoners and “the resistance within the Island.”
“We have lost a great Cuban and brother in struggle. Every time a patriot who has fought all his life for the freedom of Cuba dies, we regret that he has left without seeing the freedom of Cuba, for which he was always defending and acting wherever he was,” declared the secretary general of the ARC, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat.
Argüelles was born in Havana on September 14, 1942.
According to the ARC, he went into exile in the United States at the age of 18 and joined Brigade 2506 with the aim of fighting the new Cuban government. He landed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and was arrested and imprisoned in the Prince’s Castle.
The island’s regime sentenced him to 30 years of political prison, of which he served two before returning to exile.
Argüelles was elected president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association for the 2016-2018 period and, during that period, he spearheaded the organization’s support for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, which — according to the ARC — strengthened a bond of Trump’s support for the cause of a free Cuba.
After learning of the veteran’s death, Cuban-American congresswoman María Elvira Salazar published a message of mourning on their social networks: “It is with deep pain that I receive the news of the death of Brigadier Humberto Díaz Argüelles, our beloved El Chino Argüelles, an indomitable patriot who dedicated his life to the fight for the freedom of Cuba. (…) His departure hurts, but his example forces us to remain firm, without giving up. Rest in peace, Chino. The country honors you.”
So far, no other details have been released about the circumstances of Díaz Argüelles’ death.
