Juan Almeida Bosque (17 February 1927 – 11 September 2009) was a Cuban general and politician who was one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution and a Vice-President of the Council of State.
Biography[]
Almeida during the revolution
Juan Almeida Bosque was born in Havana, Cuba on 17 February 1927 to a family of African descent, and he left school at age eleven to become a bricklayer. He befriended Fidel Castro while studying at the University of Havana in 1952, and he was imprisoned from 1953 to 1955 for taking part in the attack on the Moncada Barracks.
When Almeida, Castro, Che Guevara, and 78 other revolutionaries arrived in Cuba on the Granma in 1956, Almeida supposedly shouted "Aquí no se rinde nadie!", meaning "No one here gives up," which would become a slogan of the revolution; these words were actually said by Camilo Cienfuegos. Almeida was known to be a good marksman, and he took part in the guerrilla warfare in the Sierra Maestra mountain range, leading the Santiago column of the Cuban Army after 1958. In 1961, he headed the Central Army in Santa Clara, Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion, and he was later promoted to general and became a "Hero of the Republic of Cuba". Almeida died in Havana in 2009 at the age of 82.