Cubans bid Castro emotional goodbye

Trump vows hard line against island nation

HAVANA • Hundreds of thousands of Cubans bade farewell to Fidel Castro on Monday, pledging allegiance to his socialist ideology and paying tribute before images of the leader as a young guerrilla gazing out over the country he would come to rule for nearly half a century.

Lines stretched for hours outside the Plaza of the Revolution, the massive plaza where Castro delivered fiery speeches to hundreds of thousands of supporters in the years after he seized power.

There and across the country, people signed condolence books and an oath of loyalty to Castro’s sweeping May 1, 2000, proclamation of the Cuban revolution as an unending battle for socialism, nationalism and an outsized role for the island on the world stage.

Tribute sites were set up in hundreds of places across the country as the government urged Cubans to reaffirm their belief in a socialist, single-party system that in recent years has struggled to maintain the fervour that was widespread at the triumph of the 1959 revolution.

Many mourners came on their own, but thousands of others were sent in groups by the communist government, which still employs about 80 per cent of the working people in Cuba despite the growth of the private sector under Castro’s successor, his brother Raul.

One of the first in line at the Plaza of the Revolution was Tania Jimenez, 53, a mathematician who arrived at 4 a.m. carrying a rose. “Fidel is everything to us, the soul of this country who gave everything, all his life,” Jimenez said, in tears.

Sandra Aguilar, a 48-yearold doctor, said her visit to the memorial had two goals: “We came to say goodbye to our commander, to reaffirm our support of the revolution,” she said.

After 10 years of leadership by Raul Castro, a relatively camera-shy and low-key successor, Cuba has found itself riveted once again by the words and images of the leader who dominated the lives of generations. Since his death on Friday night, staterun newspapers, television and radio have run wall-towall tributes to Fidel Castro, broadcasting non-stop footage of his speeches, interviews and foreign trips.

Meanwhile, presidentelect Donald Trump is threatening to end the detente with Cuba initiated by the Obama administration.

Trump tweeted Monday he “will terminate” President Barack Obama’s normalization of relations if “Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole.”

But Trump’s warning could face opposition from some Republicans on Capitol Hill and corporate leaders who see continued engagement with Havana as good for American businesses.