Fidel Castro in pictures
‘Fidel isn’t dead because the people are Fidel’
FLAG-WAVING Cuban students broke into a mass chant of “I am Fidel” to salute Fidel Castro as nine days of mourning began for the combative Cold War icon, who dominated the Communist island’s political life for generations.
Giant rallies are planned in Havana’s Revolution Square and in the eastern city of Santiago to honour Castro, who died on Friday, aged 90.
Newspapers on the island of 11million people were printed in black ink to mourn Fidel, instead of the usual red of the official Communist Party daily Granma, and the blue of Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), the paper of the Communist youth.
“For me, it’s my mother first, my children, my father, then Fidel,” said 60 year-old father-of-five Rafael Urbay, 60 from Havana as he remembered his early years spent on a remote island off the mainland with no drinking water.
“We weren’t just poor. We were wretched,” he said. “Then came Fidel and the revolution. He gave me my humanity.”
There was no heightened military or police presence to mark the passing of the epochal revolutionary leader, and at Havana University, Castro’s alma mater, hundreds of students gathered to wave huge Cuban flags and shout “Viva Fidel and Viva Raul”.
“Fidel isn’t dead because the people are Fidel,” shouted a local student leader.
Castro studied law at the university in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when it was a hotbed of leftist politics, setting him on the path that led to his toppling of US backed dictator Batista in 1959.
Under Castro, bitter diplomatic conflict with the US followed, and Cuba quickly became a firm ally of the Soviet Union, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Yet despite years of ideological strife and increasing hardship under a US economic embargo, Castro’s Cuba became renowned for high education standards and world-class doctors. Castro’s remains were cremated, and his ashes will be taken around Cuba until a state funeral on December 4.
Standing well over 1.91m tall, the bearded Castro was for years a cigar-chomping bulwark of ideological resistance to the US, decked out in green military fatigues and cap.
But the man long known as Cuba’s “Maximo Lider” (Maximum Leader) largely disappeared from the public eye after a 2006 intestinal illness that almost killed him.
Formally handing over power to Raul in 2008, he remained a major presence on the island, and regularly warned the Cuban population about the perils of giving in to the US.
“Everyone here is sad. Everyone is a Fidelista,” said Anaida Gonzales, a retired nursing professor in central Camaguey province.
“People are just going about their business, but sad. Me, I’m very sad for my Comandante, it really took me by surprise.” – Reuters
STANDING WELL OVER 1.91M TALL, THE BEARDED CASTRO WAS FOR YEARS A CIGARCHOMPING BULWARK OF IDEOLOGICAL RESISTANCE