Ex-Cuban vice president, Bay of Pigs commander, dies at 95

HAVANA (AP) — Jose Ramon Fernandez, a retired Cuban brigadier general who was key in forming the communist country's new army and commanded Cuban defenses at the Bay of Pigs, died on Sunday, state media reported. He was 95.

Tall and spindly with the rigid posture of a military man, Fernandez in his final years remained a legendary figure and served for a time as a vice president on Cuba's Council of Ministers, or Cabinet. A founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba, he was reelected to the party's ruling Central Committee in 2011 — at the age of 87.

Fernandez ran a cadet school that trained officers after the revolutionary triumph of Jan. 1, 1959, laying the foundation of the communist country's new army.