Dámaso José Lescaille Tabares

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dámaso José Lescaille Tabares, known by the alias Ulises Estrada, (December 11, 1934 – January 27, 2014) was a Cuban revolutionary, journalist, intelligence officer and ambassador. From a young age he carried out clandestine work against Fulgencio Batista. In 1959 he helped found Cuba’s intelligence service, the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI). In the early 1960s he trained Tamara Bunke. In 1965 he accompanied Che Guevara to Kigoma, participated in missions during the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, and learned Swahili. In 1970 he served as a counselor at Cuba’s embassy in Algiers. On September 11, 1973, he acted as a military adviser in Santiago de Chile. From 1975 to August 1978 he was deputy head of the American Department of the Cuban Communist Party.

From August 1978 to November 1980 he served as Cuban ambassador in Kingston, Jamaica. In 1980, after Edward Seaga became prime minister, Estrada was declared persona non grata by Jamaica. He then led the Directorate of the Non-Aligned Movement and later served as Director of Africa and the Middle East in Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. From November 1981 to March 1985 he was ambassador to Aden (South Yemen). From 1987 to 1991 he was ambassador to Algiers (Algeria), concurrently accredited to Nouakchott (Mauritania) and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. He also served as editor-in-chief of Granma International and El Habanero, and edited the magazine Tricontinental. He was born in Santiago de Cuba and died in Havana in 2014, aged 79.