Cuba to farewell its revolutionary leader in style
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CUBA mourned its revolutionary leader Fidel Castro yesterday, as the communist country prepared to bid farewell to the towering giant of its modern history with a series memorials and a four-day funeral procession.
After the stunned commotion triggered by Saturday’s announcement that Castro, 90, had died, a flurry of events are planned to mark his passing.
Castro died late on Friday after surviving 11 United States administrations and hundreds of assassination attempts. No cause of death was given.
A series of memorials will begin today, part of nine days of national mourning, when Cubans are called to converge on Havana’s renowned Revolution Square. Castro’s ashes will then go on a four-day nationwide procession before being buried in the southeastern city of Santiago on Sunday.
Santiago, Cuba’s second city, was the scene of Castro’s ill-fated first attempt at revolution in 1953 — six years before he succeeded in ousting US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro ruled Cuba from 1959 until he handed power to his brother Raul in July 2006 to recover from intestinal surgery.
Even in retirement Castro wielded influence behind the scenes, and regularly penned essays against American imperialism in the state press.
There were sharply different US reactions from outgoing President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.
Obama, who embarked on a historic rapprochement with Cuba in 2014, said the US extended a “hand of friendship” to the Cuban people.
Trump dismissed Castro as “a brutal dictator.”
The future of the US-Cuban thaw is uncertain under Trump, who has threatened to reverse course if Havana does not allow greater human rights.
The bustling streets of Havana emptied and parties ground to a halt as Castro’s admirers sank into grief.
The city was oddly silent late on Saturday, as nightclubs closed and liquor sales were limited, part of the official days of mourning.
“What can I say? Fidel Castro was larger than life,” said a tearful Aurora Mendez, 82.
She recalled a life in poverty before Castro’s revolution in 1959. “Fidel was always first in everything, fighting for the downtrodden and the poor,” Mendez said.
Indiana Valdes and her husband Maykel Duquesne, who work at a state-run bank, worried about life after Fidel Castro. “Fidel was the island’s protector, he was everywhere,” said Valdes.
Choking back tears, Valdes, 43, recalled a lifetime under “El Comandante.” Will socialism survive his death? She looked at her husband and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.
Cab driver Armando Lobaina, 50, admits that he cried on hearing the news. “Without Fidel I feel empty,” he said.
Lobaina hoped that Raul Castro and whoever succeeds him will prevent the collapse of Cuba’s socialist system and the good things that it provides, such as free health and education.
“Things can’t change too abruptly because there are people who don’t like change,” he said, adding that it is now all down to the top Communist Party leaders.
Fidel Castro, who came to power as a bearded, cigar-chomping 32-year-old, adopted the slogan “socialism or death” and kept his faith to the cause he led to the end.
He survived more than 600 assassination attempts, according to aides, as well as the failed 1961 US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
His outrage over that botched plot contributed to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the Soviet Union accepted his request to send ballistic missiles to Cuba.
The US discovery of the missiles pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The father of eight children, Fidel Castro was last seen in public on his 90th birthday on August 13.
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