Captain of the Rebel Army Felipe Guerra Matos Dies

February 13, 2024

At the age of 96, Captain of the Rebel Army Felipe Guerra Matos died on Saturday, February 10, 2024 from acute respiratory failure. Guerra Matos was the man who took charge of revolutionary sports in January of 1959 by order of Fidel.

Known as "Guerrita," his name has been associated with the leader of the Cuban Revolution since the landing of the Granma and he had Celia Sánchez Manduley as his direct liaison.

Born on May 1, 1927 in Manzanillo, in the former province of Oriente, of peasant origin, he began his involvement in the revolutionary struggle at an early age.

Guerrita, as he was affectionately known, was one of the men from Manzanillo contacted by Celia Sánchez to support the expeditionaries of the yacht Granma in the first and uncertain hours after the landing. He became an effective liaison and messenger under the guidance of Fidel, Frank and Celia.

He was in charge of taking American journalist Herbert Matthews to the Sierra Maestra to meet with Fidel on February 17, 1957, a bold action that served to make known to the world that the guerrilla chief was alive and there was an active movement in the country against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

With a prodigious memory, capable of recounting the most unusual details of each anecdote, no matter how insignificant it might seem, Guerra Matos left his mark on the guerrilla movement and later on the missions assigned after the triumph of the Revolution.

He always praised the genius and depth of thought of Fidel, as well as the leadership of Celia, his fellow countryman from Manzanillo, and the virtues of Frank País, whom he also knew through his work supporting the Rebel Army.

On January 13, 1959 he was appointed by Fidel to head the General Directorate of Sports, the direct predecessor of Inder, and he devoted his energies to carrying out the project of the leader of the Revolution, who had said: "we come determined to promote sports at all costs, to take it as far as possible."

It is said that upon taking on the task, a journalist asked him: what do you know about sports?, and his answer was a home run of confidence and trust in the nascent Revolution: "Nothing, but we knew nothing about war, and we won it."

Under his leadership the network of sports facilities was expanded and competitions were conceived with a great popular and massive sense, the seed of what later became a powerful movement that led Cuba to places of privilege in the world sports arena.