Luis Andrés Vargas Gómez

Luis Andres Vargas Gomez (14 May 1915 in Havana, Cuba - 13 January 2003 in Coral Gables, Florida) was a Cuban lawyer, economist, diplomat and anti-Castro activist who spent 21 years in Cuban prisons.

Vargas was the son of Pedro Vargas and Margarita Gomez-Toro (the daughter of General Maximo Gomez). In Dec. 1935, he was appointed chancellor of the Cuban consulate in Key West, Florida, and in Sept. 1936 was assigned to the Cuban consulate in New Orleans, Louisiana. In the fall semester of 1937 he enrolled as a freshman in the Literary course of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tulane University. Vargas attended only that one semester and his photograph is not included in the 1937-38 yearbook, although the name "Andrew Vargas" is listed under the names of students whose images do not appear in the class panels. Vargas returned to Havana in July 1938 to work in the Foreign Ministry. He enrolled in the University of Havana School of Law and graduated in 1944. His first marriage in 1935 to Helen Small Whyte, the widow of diplomat Calixto Eugenio Sanchez Garcia and mother of revolutionary martyr Calixto Sanchez Whyte, ended in divorce in 1955. They had no children of their own. In 1955, Vargas married Maria Teresa de la Campa y Roff (the daughter of Batista's Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel de la Campa y Caraveda), who had two children from a previous marriage.

He initially served in Fidel Castro's government in 1959 as the Cuban delegate to the United Nations European offices in Geneva. He went to exile in Coral Gables, Florida in April 1960.

Vargas became involved in the planning of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, serving as the director of a clandestine radio station. Five days before the invasion, on April 12, 1961, he re-entered Cuba with his wife. Later he was captured by the Castro regime after the Ecuadorian Embassy only granted asylum to his wife. He was sentenced to death by firing squad, but his sentenced was commuted to 20 years after his mother, a revolutionary activist, pleaded on his behalf. His brother Pedro "Muño" Vargas Gomez was a Communist who supported Fidel Castro. Vargas served 20 years and seven months before being released on December 25, 1982. He was allowed to rejoin his wife in exile when civil rights activist Jesse Jackson convinced Fidel Castro to release Vargas and 25 other political prisoners on June 28, 1984.

From 1986-1999, he wrote a column for El Nuevo Herald. He died of kidney failure on January 13, 2003 in his home in Coral Gables.

References

• South Florida Sun-Sentinel; "Luis Andres Vargas Gomez, Former Cuban Prisoner, Dead at 87"; 14 January 2003.
• Time magazine; "Inside Castro's Prisons"; 15 August, 1983.
• Time magazine; "A Mixed Bag From Castos's Jails"; 9 July 1984.