Cuba replaces civil aviation chief, former lieutenant to Che Guevara, with terse announcement

Cuba replaces head of civil aviation

HAVANA — Cuba has replaced the official who oversees the country’s airlines and airports, a general who fought alongside Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara as a teenager, according to a terse statement in official media.

Rogelio Acevedo was replaced by Gen. Ramon Martinez Echevarria, the current No. 2 in the Air Force air defense unit, according to an announcement published Tuesday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

No reason was given for the change at the Civil Aeronatics Institute, which has played an important role in the expansion of Cuba’s tourism industry. The announcement said Acevedo, 68, would be given “other tasks,” but it did not describe them or refer to Acevedo’s background as a revolutionary.

Acevedo joined the fight against dictator Fulgencio Batista when he was 16, fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains in a unit led by Guevara. His younger brother Enrique joined him, and wrote about the experience in a book titled “The Shirtless Ones.”

After the revolution triumphed in 1959, Acevedo was named first head of a new national militia at age 18, and he later fought with Cuban forces in Angola.

He is a longtime member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and has run the Civil Aviation Institute since 1989.

Martinez studied in the former Soviet Union as a helicopter pilot, and is also a veteran of Angola. The Civil Aviation authority controls all air transport in Cuba.