Armando Hart, who as Fidel Castro’s confidant and first education minister redeemed the Cuban revolution’s vow of universal literacy, died on Sunday in Havana. He was 87. The cause was respiratory failure, the Cuban Communist Party said. Hart, a lawyer whose grandfather was born in the United States and immigrated to Cuba, later was also his country’s first culture minister. An early member of Castro’s inner circle, Hart had played an integral role in the government for more than five decades since 1959, when revolutionaries toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, which the United States supported.