Historic Castro Photographer Meneses Dies

Enrique Meneses, the Spanish journalist who scored a historic scoop photographing Fidel Castro and his rebels in the Cuban mountains during their revolution, has died aged 83, his friends said Monday.

Meneses's photographs of bearded Castro and Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra -- where he camped with them for four months in 1957-1958 -- made the cover of Paris Match magazine and became images of reference for the uprising.

Meneses died on Sunday in Madrid's La Paz hospital after a long illness, his longtime friend Annick Duval told Agence France Presse.

In his seven-decade career, Meneses covered conflicts such as the Suez crisis and the Bosnian war as well as founding and editing magazines and broadcasts.

"He was an extraordinary photojournalist but he was not just a photojournalist. He was a great journalist in every sense," Duval said.

It was Meneses's photos of the young rebels, on horseback and smoking cigars between skirmishes in the Sierra Maestra, that made his mark on history, his friends said.

"The first photographs from there were his, and they went around the world," Duval said. "He was the one who made Fidel Castro's revolution known."