At the age of 90, José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, another of the historic collaborators of the regimeinforms the official media Cubadebate.
Balaguer Cabrera was born in Guantánamo in 1932 and in 1949 he moved to Havana to study medicine. According to the note Cubadebateafter Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état in 1952, he joined the fight against tyranny and joined the group of the University Student Federation (FEU), with which he participated in demonstrations and student strikes.
In May 1957, he joined the group that Frank País sent to the Sierra Maestra. He was arrested at the Central Miranda and served two months in prison at the Boniato Prison. In 1958 he joined “Pedro Soto Alba” Company B as a combatant and doctor, in Column 19, Frank País Second Eastern Front, and participated “in various combats,” according to Cubadebate.
The official media note highlights that tras the triumph of the RevolutionBalaguer Cabrera held various military positions until Substitute for the Vice Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). Between 1976 and 1985 he was the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party (PCC) in Santiago de Cuba; subsequently he was promoted to a member of the Central Committee Secretariat.
From 1990 to 1992 he served as Ambassador of Cuba in the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was later renamed the Russian Federation. In 1992 he became a member of the Political Bureau of the PCC and in 2004 it was appointed Minister of Public Health.
Balaguer Cabrera held that position in 2010, when 26 patients died of cold in the Havana Psychiatric Hospitalknown as Mazorra.
“José Ramón Balaguer, the Minister of Public Health, died in 2010, when almost thirty patients from the Psychiatric Hospital died of cold —yes, of cold in #Cuba—,” recalls journalist Boris González Arena in a publication on Facebook.
“The thinness of the bodies shows that they were not only cold, but also hungry. The images were spread throughout the country and Castroism had to recognize the event,” says González Arena, who accompanies his publication with photos of the corpses. from the patients.
“He never apologized and, of course, the culprits were the director of the hospital and another handful of irresponsible minors. He must already be responding about images like this,” says the journalist about Balaguer Cabrera.
José Ramón Balaguer, the Minister of Public Health, died in 2010, when they died of cold -yes, of cold in #Cuba- almost…
Posted by Boris Gonzalez Arenas on Friday, July 15, 2022
Naturally, the sad episode that cost the lives of almost 30 Cubans in the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, does not appear in the “extensive list of services to the Homeland”, which mentions Cubadebate and in which it is emphasized that Balaguer Cabrera was a member of the Central Committee of the Party from 1975 to 2019 —He took over as head of the Department of International Relations in 2011— and a deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power since its foundation in 1976. He held the status of Founder of the PCC.
The note also highlights that he received several awards and recognitions granted by the Council of State.
According to Cubadebatein 2019, when he was already 87 years old, when requesting his release as head of the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee, due to health problems, Balaguer Cabrera wrote in his own handwriting to Raul Castro:
“In 1952 my revolutionary struggle began and was forged and consolidated as a combatant of the Frank País Second Eastern Front under his leadership and that of Machado. If due to imperial madness we have to fight again, I will be there in the trench with my rifle.”
The body will be cremated and his ashes will be exhibited in the Veterans Pantheon of the Colon Necropolis on Saturday, July 16 between 9:00 AM and 12:00 PM, until his subsequent transfer to the Mausoleum of the Second Eastern Front Frank Country.