Luis Andres Vargas Gomez

Luis Andrés Vargas Gómez ( born May 14, 1915 in Havana, † January 13, 2003 in Coral Gables ) was a Cuban lawyer, economist, diplomat and anti-Castro activist.

Life

The son of Pedro Vargas and Margarita Gómez Toro ( daughter of General Máximo Gómez and independence hero ) studied at the University of Havana and earned his PhD there in 1944. In 1936, he pursued a diplomatic career in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After the government takeover of Fidel Castro in 1959 Luis Andrés Gómez Vargas first took over the post of Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations in Geneva, but was commissioned in 1960 into exile in Florida. Here he was involved in the planning and preparation of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Five days before the beginning of the invasion Luis Andrés Vargas Gómez returned to Cuba. After the failure of the company, he was arrested by the Castro regime and initially sentenced to death. Later the judgment in a 30- year prison sentence was commuted. After 20 years in prison, he was released in 1982. After negotiations, the U.S. civil rights activist Jesse Jackson ( the release of 25 political prisoners reached ) with Fidel Castro Vargas was allowed to leave his wife, who lived in exile in Florida.

In the U.S., he headed the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Catholic St. Thomas University in Miami, and he became involved in the Cuban exile opposition. From 1986 to 1999 he had a column in the Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald. He died 87 years old from kidney failure.