Harsh weather expected at camp
“and it’s not going to happen.”
Cloud, 32, of Wisconsin, said she cried watching images of security dogs attacking pipeline opponents. And she was disgusted when police doused protesters with water cannons in subfreezing temperatures.
“I feel humiliated as a veteran,” said Cloud, who was deployed three times in her eight years serving in the Navy. “I went to war. I protected this country. For this to be happening at home, it’s embarrassing.”
Members of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux tribe began the occupation of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, arguing that the pipeline’s crossing underneath the Missouri River threatens their drinking water, as well as that of millions of Americans downstream.
The corps has told protesters they must leave the camp by Monday as brutally harsh winter conditions set in.
Organizers predict some 3,000 veterans will amass at the camp by the time official demonstrations are expected to begin Monday.
On Saturday, law enforcement officers said they held productive discussions with leaders of the veterans group. Police have agreed to retreat and move their militarized road blockade further away from the camp, so long as demonstrators agreed to keep their distance and stay off of private land in the area.
“We had a good discussion and walked away with a mutual commitment to maintaining peace ... mutual respect for one another and ensuring adequate space between law enforcement and protesters,” said North Dakota National Guard commander Gen. Alan Dohrmann.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Spider Marks, a member of the propipeline Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now, says the veterans at the camp do not represent all military veterans.
Many vets work on the pipeline construction crews, he said, as well as in local law enforcement.
At dawn Saturday, about 150 people huddled near the icy Cannonball River for a daily water ceremony.
The men and women sang, prayed and chanted “water is life.”
One speaker talked about the spotlight the veterans would bring. “The whole world is watching now,” one said. Contributing: Danielle Ferguson, (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader SANTIAGO DE CUBA For Cubans who live in this eastern city of Cuba, Fidel Castro’s decision to lay his ashes to rest here was an obvious one.
Havana may be the political, economic and tourism capital of this Carribean island, but the mountainous region around Santiago de Cuba was where Castro’s revolution got started.
“This is where he dug the roots of his tree of revolution,” said Magdeline Fernandez Gomez, 72, a life-long Santiago resident whose husband fought with Fidel’s bearded rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains nearby.
People throughout Santiago spent this week preparing for Castro’s funeral. They swept sidewalks, painted fences, and prepared his gravesite. The country has been honoring the fallen communist dictator all week, with a ceremony in Havana on Monday featuring eulogies from foreign heads of state and a fourday funeral procession east toward Santiago.
When his ashes are interred at a cemetery Sunday morning in a small, family ceremony, it will complete a historic story that started in this remote region. Alberto Perez,
Armando Labaceno, a history professor who has written extensively about Santiago’s history, said eastern Cuba has always been isolated from the cosmopolitan capital so far west.
The eastern region — known collectively as Oriente — viewed Santiago as more of a capital than Havana ever was.
That’s why Castro’s parents, from the eastern city of Birán, sent a young Fidel to school in Santiago.
Labaceno said the region’s isolation also bred a revolutionary spirit that has endured for centuries. Cuba’s original freedom fighters — from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to José Martí — had their strongest base of support there.
So when Castro attempted his first uprising in 1953, he attacked the Moncada army barracks in SANTIAGO DE CUBA Cubans held one final public memorial for fallen dictator Fidel Castro on Saturday in this eastern city that served as the heart and the start of his communist revolution.
Pulled by a green military jeep, his ashes rolled throughout the colonial city, passing by the site of the army barracks Castro attacked to start his guerrilla war and crossing under the balcony in Céspedes Park where he declared victory for his revolution on Jan. 1, 1959.
Cuban President Raúl Castro, who fought alongside Fidel from the start of the revolution and took over the country when his brother fell ill in 2006, delivered a final eulogy Saturday night before thousands in the city's Plaza of the Revolution Antonio Maceo.
Raúl recounted the major obstacles Fidel overcame throughout his 49 years ruling the island nation, from the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion to the “Special Period” of economic ruin that fol- lowed the fall of Cuba's main benefactor, the Soviet Union.
Raúl expressed no personal sense of loss or pain, instead promising to use his brother's lessons to continue fighting Fidel's revolution.
“He demonstrated that yes we could, yes we can and yes we will be able to overcome any obstacle, threat or turbulence in our commitment to build socialism in Cuba and guarantee the independence and sovereignty of the homeland,” Raúl Castro said.
Saturday’s memorial in Santiago was simple, with a halfdozen Cubans delivering speeches praising Castro’s legacies in health care, education, science and women’s rights.
Presidents from Bolivia and Nicaragua were there and former presidents of Brazil, but they did not speak, leaving the spotlight on Raúl Castro.
On Sunday, Fidel Castro’s ashes will be taken to Santa Ifigenia Cemetery where they will be interred next to the grave of Cuba’s original freedom fighter, José Martí, in a ceremony Raúl Castro said would be simple and sincere.
Thousands of Cubans filled the plaza during Saturday’s ceremony. Santiago. After he was arrested, freed and launched his second attack in 1956, he again landed in southeastern Cuba.
And while many remember him rolling into Havana in 1959 as the culmination of his rise to power, Castro declared victory a week before from a balcony over Céspedes Park in the heart of Santiago.
“Havana has always been the capital of Cuba, and we respect that Fidel had to live and work there,” said Alberto Perez, 45, a refinery worker from Santiago. “But this is where Fidel’s heart always was.”
Castro’s decision to be buried in Santiago also reflected a wish to be alongside Martí. The Cuban poet, writer, politician and freedom fighter is considered the original Cuban founding father. His statue dominates the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, his writings are taught to schoolchildren like gospel and his image is seen on walls and murals as frequently as Castro’s.
“Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life,” he wrote. “Whatever is done without it is imperfect.”
“Everything that’s happened in Cuba, Martí imagined it, wrote about it, proclaimed it,” Labaceno said. “Fidel was the one who best interpreted that.”
45, a refinery worker