Manuel Antonio de Varona; Cuban Leader Forced Into Exile

Manuel Antonio (Tony) de Varona, who was prime minister in Cuba’s last freely elected government and was forced into exile four times during his struggles against dictatorships, has died at 83.

De Varona, who died Thursday of cancer, founded the Student Revolutionary Directorate in 1930 and it helped defeat the Machado regime. But De Varona was forced into exile.

He led a workers strike against the government of Fulgencio Batista and went into exile again in 1936.

He returned and was elected to Congress in 1940. In 1944, he was elected to the Senate, where he became majority leader. President Carlos Prio named him prime minister in October, 1948. From 1950 to 1952, De Varona was president pro tem of the Senate.

After Batista seized power again in 1952, De Varona was again forced into exile. With Fidel Castro’s triumph in 1959, he returned to Cuba but soon turned against the regime and fled for the last time in 1960.

During the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, De Varona waited in Miami to be flown to Cuba to form a U.S.-backed provisional government. But the invasion of exiles failed, and De Varona never returned to his homeland.

Since 1980, he headed an exile group called the Cuban Patriotic Junta.

“Tony was the most representative and vigorous figure remaining of the generation of the ‘30s,” said Andres Nazario Sargen, secretary general of the militant anti-Castro group Alpha 66.

De Varona is survived by his wife, Olivia Borges, his children, Carlos, Lina and Yvonne, and six grandchildren.