BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA

Dr. Emilio ''Millo'' Ochoa, the last survivor of the 81 politicians who established the 1940 constitution in Cuba, died Wednesday in Miami, one week short of his 100th birthday.

With Ochoa's passing, the last marker of Cuba's constitutional democracy has disappeared -- a constitution that protected free speech and press, allowed a multitude of political parties and labor rights and affirmed the right to public education.

Ochoa died in his apartment in southwest Miami-Dade surrounded by his relatives.

''He died in his sleep without suffering, because he was not sick,'' said his son-in-law, Rafael Sosa de Quesada.

Sosa described Ochoa as "a family man who devoted his entire life to Cuba; a man with extraordinary courage and bomb-proof honesty.''

In February, state and local officials, including House Speaker Marco Rubio, honored the elder statesman by naming a 10-block stretch of Tamiami Trail after him.

Ochoa was first elected senator in 1940 and served until 1948. He was a fierce opponent of strongman Fulgencio Batista, who suspended Cuba's 1940 constitution in the 1950s.

Ochoa founded two political parties: the Cuban Revolutionary (Authentic) Party in 1934, and the Cuban People's (Orthodox) Party in 1947 -- from which a young Fidel Castro emerged.

Born July 4, 1907, in the eastern city of Holguin, Ochoa grew up as one of seven children in a poor family. In his youth, he worked on a tobacco farm but never quit studying.

EARLY STRUGGLE

He studied dentistry in Santiago de Cuba and graduated in 1937. His studies were partly funded by friends in his early political struggle against the regime of Gerardo Machado (1925-1933).

Lacking money to set up a doctor's office, he worked as an itinerant dentist through the countryside of Oriente province. At the same time, he rose in the ranks of the Authentic Party, which in 1939 presented him as a candidate for the Constituent Assembly.

The delegates, who represented 11 parties, promulgated the new constitution on June 5, 1940. It was considered to be the most socially advanced document of its type and period in Latin America. The previous charter had been adopted in 1901, when the independent Republic of Cuba was born.

''Those were three months of blunt but respectful debates,'' Ochoa said in an interview with El Nuevo Herald in 2005. ``I worked every hour of the day and slept little. But I continue to be proud of that constitution. It has been more democratic and beneficial for the people of Cuba than all the laws promulgated by Fidel Castro.''

Luis Conte Agüero, founder of the Orthodox Party and a friend of Ochoa's since the 1940s, called Ochoa "the great inspiration, the father, the man who founded our political organization.''

Conte Agüero said Ochoa forced the emergence of Cuban Orthodoxy and ``knew how to keep high the party's name even in exile.''

Ochoa was arrested 32 times because of his political convictions and sought exile in 1960, at age 53.

However, he was forced to return to Cuba in 1961, after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. His son Carlos Emilio, one of the raiders, was captured and later released during a prisoner exchange agreed to by Castro and President John F. Kennedy.

The family moved to Venezuela, where Ochoa practiced dentistry until 1965. He taught Spanish at Wayne State College in Nebraska (1966-69) and in a Catholic school in Chicago (1969-71) before settling in Miami.

In exile, he worked as a taxi driver, office worker and messenger for a real estate company. Until 2004, he worked part-time at the Miami-Dade Department of Children and Families.

''I never had a penny to my name and didn't amass riches as a politician in Cuba. Here in exile, I continue to be poor,'' said Ochoa, who lived in a government-subsidized apartment.

He practiced dentistry with a Miami medical team that traveled to Nicaragua in the 1980s to help the contras fighting the Sandinistas.

DREAMS OF DEMOCRACY

He never stopped thinking about democracy for Cuba, although he used to comment wryly about the presidential aspirations of his exiled compatriots.

''We Cubans have a defect: we are very gullible. We believe any puppet or phony who talks over a radio station or on a platform,'' he said.

Ochoa is survived by his wife, Martha Herrera, whom he married in 1986; daughter Beba; grandchildren Elsa, Rafael Emilio and Eduardo Carlos, and seven grandchildren. His first wife, Domy Núñez, died in 1969 after a 36-year marriage. His son Carlos Emilio died in 1996.

Visitation will be 1 p.m. to midnight Friday at the Caballero-Rivero-Woodlawn Funeral Home, 8200 SW 40th St. Burial will be Saturday morning at Flagler Memorial Park.

E-mail wcancio@Miami

Herald.com. Miami Herald staff writer Luisa Yanez contributed to this report.