Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (December 19, 1926 in

Caibarién Caibarién is a municipality city in the Villa Clara Province, Villa Clara province of Cuba. Caibarién is known as "La Villa Blanca" () for its sands and beaches. They are famous for their "Parrandas" (Carnivals) along with Remedios, Cuba, Reme ...

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

– August 8, 2006 in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

) was a fellow

n revolutionary alongside

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...

who later became an imprisoned dissident of the government. Arcos has been described as "a symbol of the opposition, and the dean of the opposition". Born in the small town of

, Arcos met Castro while the two attended law school at the

University of Havana The University of Havana or (UH, ''Universidad de La Habana'') is a university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of the Republic of Cuba. Founded on January 5, 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the first ...

. He participated in the 1953 attack on

Moncada Barracks The Moncada Barracks was a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, named after General Guillermo Moncada, a hero of the Cuban War of Independence. On 26 July 1953, the barracks was the site of an armed attack by a small group of revolutionaries ...

that jump-started the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...

against then-leader

Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (; ; born Rubén Zaldívar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator ...

, where he suffered a gunshot wound to the back that partially disabled his right leg and left him a legacy of lifelong pain. Freed under a pardon, Arcos spent the next several years gathering support, money, and munitions throughout

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

, and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Following the success of the revolution in 1959, Arcos became Cuba's ambassador to

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. However, while Arcos was away, he grew disillusioned both by Cuba's alliance with the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, and what he saw to be the dictatorial tendencies of Fidel Castro. Upon his return, he began expressing dissent against Castro and the Cuban government. In response, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years as a counterrevolutionary. He was released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but his request to leave the country was refused. An illegal attempt to leave the country put Arcos in jail again in 1981. He was released in 1988, and quickly became the executive secretary of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, which he had joined in the early 1980s. His brother,

Sebastian Arcos Bergnes Sebastian Arcos Bergnes (1931 – December 22, 1997, New York City) was a Cuban human rights activist. A prominent Cuban dissident, he was openly adversarial to the dictatorships of Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista. Role in Cuban Revolution A ...

was appointed vice-President of the Committee and was responsible for expanding it from a small Havana-based group into a nationwide organization. Gustavo decided not to leave Cuba and spent the rest of his life trying to improve human rights in the island and promoting a peaceful transition to democracy, stoically suffering repeated harassment, arrests, and "acts of repudiation". Arcos died on August 8, 2006 after an illness. He was 79. In a number of respects his life story resembles that of Mario Chanes de Armas, another Moncada veteran.de La Cova, Antonio Rafael 2007 The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution. University of South Carolina Press

References

External links

Obituary
(''Houston Chronicle'') * http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/gustav.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Arcos, Gustavo 1926 births 2006 deaths People from Caibarién Opposition to Fidel Castro Cuban politicians Cuban diplomats Ambassadors of Cuba to Belgium Cuban revolutionaries People of the Cuban Revolution