The end is near, says Fidel Castro

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has delivered a valedictory speech to the Communist Party that he put in power a half-century ago, telling party members he is nearing the end of his life and exhorting them to help his ideas survive. "I'll be 90 years old soon," Castro said in his most extensive public appearance in years, reports AP.

"Soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them." Castro spoke as the government announced that his brother Raul will retain the Cuban Communist Party's highest post alongside his hardline second-in-command. That announcement and Fidel Castro's speech together delivered a resounding message that the island's revolutionary generation will remain in control even as its members age and die, relations with the US are normalized, and popular dissatisfaction grows over the country's economic per- formance.

Fifty-five years after Fidel Castro declared that Cuba's revolution was socialist and began installing a single-party system and centrally planned economy, the Cuban government is battling a deep crisis of credibility. With no memory of the revolution's heady first decades, younger Cubans complain bitterly about low state salaries of about USD 25 a month that leave them struggling to afford food and other staple goods.

Cuba's creaky state-run media and cultural institutions compete with flashy foreign programming shared online and on memory drives passed hand-tohand. Emigration to the United States and other countries has soared to one of its highest points since the revolution.