Government opponent and early Castro bodyguard dies at 83

CNN
September 18, 2000

Government opponent and early Castro bodyguard dies at 83

                 HAVANA (AP) -- Jesus Yanez Pelletier, a human rights activist who over the
                 decades served as Fidel Castro's jailer, his bodyguard, then finally his detractor,
                 died of a heart attack Monday after collapsing as he left a meeting at the U.S.
                 Interests Section, his family and friends said. He was 83.

                 Yanez Pelletier was often introduced as "the man who saved Fidel," a former
                 prison guard who refused orders by his superiors in then-President Fulgencio
                 Batista's army to poison Castro when the future Cuban leader was jailed in the
                 mid-1950s.

Later, Yanez Pelletier joined the rebel forces, and after the revolution triumphed in
1959 he served as a bodyguard to Castro.

                 Over time, Yanez Pelletier grew disillusioned with the new government and
                 ultimately spent more than a decade in prison for opposing political views. He
                 joined the government opposition when freed in the 1970s.

                 Following his morning collapse outside the American mission, Yanez Pelletier was
                 taken to Havana's Calixto Garcia Hospital, where he was pronounced dead in the
                 early afternoon, relatives reached at his home said.

"He was in perfect condition when he left the house," his stepdaughter Jesica
Menendez said in a telephone interview.

The reason for his meeting at the American mission was not immediately known.

News of Yanez Pelletier's death saddened Cuba's small circle of human rights
advocates and government opponents.

                 "We are talking about a man of history," said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the
                 non-governmental Cuban Commission of Human Rights and Reconciliation.
                 Yanez Pelletier had originally belonged to Sanchez' organization, but broke away
                 and helped form the Cuban Pro Human Rights Committee, of which he was vice
                 president.

                 Yanez Pelletier was a young prison officer in 1953 when Castro was jailed for 22
                 months after he and his followers launched a disastrous attack on the Moncada
                 military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

That attack marked the beginning of Castro's revolutionary battle and is now
commemorated annually as a major holiday by the communist government.

                 On Castro's first trip to the United States as Cuba's new prime minister, Yanez
                 Pelletier accompanied him and is in old black-and-white photographs of Castro's
                 meeting with then-Vice President Richard Nixon.

Yanez Pelletier leaves his wife, Marieta Menendez, and three children from
previous marriages.