Carlos Fernández Gondín
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Carlos Fernández Gondín (1 July 1938 – 7 January 2017) was a
Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
n politician. He was a founding member of the
Communist Party of Cuba The Communist Party of Cuba (, PCC) is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popu ...
, and served as the country's
Minister of the Interior An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
from 2015 until his death.


Career

Fernández Gondín was born in
Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
into a
working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
family. He joined the
Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (; FAR) are the military forces of Cuba. They include Cuban Revolutionary Army, Revolutionary Army, Cuban Revolutionary Navy, Revolutionary Navy, Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force, Revolutionary A ...
in 1958, which was led by
Raúl Castro Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz ( ; ; born 3 June 1931) is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the One-par ...
, and fought against
Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (born Rubén Zaldívar; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who played a dominant role in Cuban politics from his initial rise to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of t ...
and later, against the United States in the
Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...
. He was a founding member of the
Communist Party of Cuba The Communist Party of Cuba (, PCC) is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popu ...
in 1965. In 1975, Fernández Gondín helped
Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...
to gain independence from
Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...
; he was one of the first Cubans to visit Angola, and was appointed second chief of the military mission there. Fernández Gondín was a Major general and counterintelligence chief of the Cuban Army. From 1989, Fernández Gondín was the First Deputy Minister, and in 1993, he became a representative of the National Assembly of People's Power, a role that he held until his death. From 2015 until his death, he was the country's
Minister of the Interior An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
, replacing Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, who resigned for health reasons; Fernández Gondín had previously been the Deputy Interior Minister. In 2015, Fernández Gondín met with then
United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security The deputy secretary of homeland security is the chief operating officer of the United States Department of Homeland Security, with responsibility for managing day-to-day operations. The department has over 208,000 employees and an annual budge ...
Alejandro Mayorkas Alejandro Nicolas Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959) is an American attorney and government official who was the seventh United States secretary of homeland security, serving from 2021 until 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, Mayorkas previ ...
. Fernández Gondín was awarded the titles "Hero of the Cuban Republic" and the
Máximo Gómez Máximo Gómez y Báez (November 18, 1836 – June 17, 1905) was a general of Dominican origin in the Cuban Wars of Independence (1868-78 and 1895–98). He was known for his controversial Scorched earth tactics, which entailed dynamiting pa ...
Order.


Illness

In 2015, Fernández Gondín was reported to have had a
stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
, and in 2016, Fernández Gondín did not attend a 55th anniversary celebration for the Cuban Interior Ministry, due to ill-health. Fernández Gondín died on 7 January 2017 from "complications of a long chronic disease." On 10 January 2017, Julio César Gandarilla Bermejo took over the role of Minister of the Interior.


See also

* Ministry of the Interior of Cuba


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez Gondin, Carlos 1938 births 2017 deaths Interior ministers of Cuba People from Santiago de Cuba