Cuba revolution hero Almeida dies at 82

HAVANA (Reuters) - Vice President Juan Almeida, one of the leaders of the Cuban revolution and a stalwart in Cuba's aging old guard, died of heart failure at age 82, state-run media said on Saturday.

Almeida was at the side of Fidel and Raul Castro from the earliest days of their guerrilla uprising and was the only black commander in the leadership.

He had been in ill health for several years and died late on Friday, Communist Party newspaper Granma said. The government declared Sunday a national day of mourning and ordered flags flown at half-staff.

"The name of Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque will remain always in the hearts and minds of his compatriots," it said in a statement in Granma.

Fidel Castro took power after the rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959, and ruled until his brother Raul succeeded him as president last year.

Almeida served in high posts in the revolutionary government and at his death was one of several vice presidents in the Council of State under Raul Castro. He was also a member of the powerful political bureau of the ruling Communist Party.

Many of Cuba's top leaders are in their late 70s and early 80s and Almeida's death raises fresh questions about who will succeed them.

Fidel Castro, who still plays a role in government and is head of the Communist Party, is 83. Castro has not been seen in public since July 2006 when he had intestinal surgery, but looked fit in an appearance on Cuban television last month.

Raul Castro is 78, as is his first vice president, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura.

Vice President Ramiro Valdes, who like Almeida held the title "Commander of the Revolution," is 77.

Raul Castro recently alluded to the age of Cuba's old guard when he announced he was delaying a long-awaited Communist Party congress, saying "the laws of life" meant it would likely be the last for the historic leaders of the revolution.

The congress was put off, he said, because it faces many critical decisions to assure the revolution lives on.

REVOLUTIONARY PATRIOTS

But he warned in an August 1 speech to the Cuban parliament that enemies in the United States who believe the Cuban revolution will die with his generation were mistaken.

"The generations of revolutionary patriots that follow us ... will never disarm ideologically," he said.

Two younger leaders widely considered the logical successors to the current generation, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Cabinet chief Carlos Lage, were ousted in a March Cabinet shake-up, and no one of equal prominence has replaced them.

They were dismissed for what the government considered acts of disloyalty to the old guard.

Cuban parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, appearing on Saturday at an event urging the release of five Cuban agents imprisoned in the United States, called Almeida "one of the principal architects of the Cuban revolution."

"He was a man from humble origins, a bricklayer, black. All his life he worked with his hands, with sweat on his face, but he was a man of much sensibility -- a musician, a poet and he was a soldier in revolutionary combat from the first moment," he said.

Almeida, born and raised in a humble Havana neighborhood, met Fidel Castro in 1952 and participated in the Castro-led July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba that began the Cuban revolution.

He and the Castros were imprisoned after the ill-fated attack. Following a pardon by Batista in 1955, they were released and went to Mexico to regroup and train.

He was on the yacht Granma when it carried the small rebel fighting force from Mexico to Cuba in late 1956 and he fought in the Sierra Maestra mountains that were the rebel base. Fidel Castro named him a commander, in charge of the third rebel front.

(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes and Esteban Israel; Editing by Peter Cooney)