As Cuba Crumbles, Diaz-Canel Showers Praise on Fidel Castro
Raul Castro, 95, attended the tribute, seated in the audience alongside his brother’s widow, Dalia Soto del Valle.
HAVANA TIMES – Cuba commemorated the centennial of Fidel Castro’s birth (1926-2016) on Thursday with a political and cultural show at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater, attended by his brother and former president Raul Castro (2008-2018), his widow Dalia Soto del Valle, and other relatives of the leader of the Cuban Revolution.
Raul Castro, retired from his official positions and currently the “leader at the head of the Cuban Revolution,” according to official terminology, was joined by President Miguel Diaz-Canel and high-ranking representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba (the only legal party) and the Government, as well as relatives of both brothers.
During the cultural event, headlined by the Cuban children’s theater company La Colmenita, which presented a journey through images and songs depicting the life of the man who served as president of the Caribbean nation for nearly half a century, Diaz-Canel spoke to highlight the figure of Fidel Castro, whom he said dedicated his life “to fighting for every just cause.”
The president said Fidel “lives forever” as a “warrior, rebel and righteous man of humanity,” and that Cuba possesses his legacy of “independence, revolution, values and the achievements that socialism represents.”
Under these premises, he said, “we are undertaking a process of economic and social transformations,” referring to the package of 176 reforms approved this June that seek to liberalize and decentralize the island’s economy, which has been mired in a profound crisis for more than six years.
Diaz-Canel again lashed out at the United States Government, accusing it of being a “fascist regime” that is “intensifying” its actions against Cuba with a “brutal and immoral imperial siege that seeks the extermination of our people.”
The show also marked the closing of the First International Colloquium Fidel: Legacy and Future, which had been held since Monday at Havana’s Convention Center and was attended by more than 1,000 Cuban and foreign delegates.
During Thursday’s inauguration of a collective photography exhibition in Havana’s Revolution Square, featuring some 30 portraits from different moments when Fidel Castro was at that location, one of his sons, Alex Castro, said his father “always had the wisdom to confront difficulties” and “an answer in mind.” He was responding to a question about how his father would have reacted to the crisis the island is experiencing and the intense pressure from the United States to bring about political and economic changes on the island.
“With tremendous wisdom,” and with “that experience, that persistence, and the discipline and his struggle for freedom,” Castro reiterated when describing how he remembered his father. Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the exhibition, which was part of the centennial commemoration, along with other representatives of the Government and the Communist Party of Cuba. Diaz-Canel said Castro “embodies the values and ideas that sustain” the Cuban people today and described the occasion as one of those days when “particularly in Cuba, we feel that Fidel is a country.”
The exhibition featured photographs by Liborio Noval, Roberto Chile, Raul Corrales, Jorge Oller, Raul Abreu, Juvenal Balan and Gilberto Rabassa, who recounted their experiences working with Fidel Castro. “Fidel was very photogenic, and really his bearing, his history, his figure, his physique (…) helped him look good in every photograph,” Chile told EFE. For some 25 years, Chile accompanied one of the best-known and most controversial political figures of the 20th century, documenting him through audiovisual work and photography.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, installed by the United States following the capture of Nicolas Maduro in early January, highlighted Fidel Castro’s “commitment to dignity, social justice, sovereignty and the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
“President Fidel Castro is among those leaders who transcend time and remain in the collective memory,” Rodriguez said in a message posted on social media. She also said Castro was a “leader of integrity” who became a reference point for the “free peoples of the world.” Venezuela’s ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) said the Cuban Revolution leader’s legacy “remains alive.”
This week on the island has been marked by various activities centered on Fidel Castro, while presidents of countries including Russia, China and Brazil sent messages to the Cuban Government to mark the occasion.
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua have also celebrated the anniversary, specifically at the new monument erected in Managua in memory of Fidel Castro.
Public employees, members of the military and police, and members of the Sandinista Youth gathered on the “From Bolivar to Chavez” Avenue, where the enormous metal sculpture was installed, carrying Cuban flags and bouquets of flowers to pay tribute to Fidel Castro on the centennial of his birth.
“Fidel lives here, among his people and among our peoples, and in this America of ours, of blazing suns, intense souls, courageous human beings, we who vibrate with the splendor of our highest ideals, feelings and struggle for justice, for genuine truth, for the peace that demands and calls for dignity,” Nicaragua’s co-president Rosario Murillo said through official media.
Managua Mayor Reyna Rueda, a Sandinista, said that “Commander Fidel continues to be that beacon of inspiration for all of us as militants, as revolutionaries, inspiring us to continue strengthening our peace and our profound consciousness as Nicaraguans.”
Murillo, wife of co-president Daniel Ortega, lashed out on Tuesday at those who criticize the sculpture her Government installed in Castro’s honor to mark the centennial of the Cuban Revolution leader’s birth (1926-2016), calling them “traitors and cowards” who “always show signs of profound darkness, wickedness and malignancy.”
This week on the island has been marked by various activities centered on the figure of Fidel Castro, and throughout Thursday, the centennial of his birth prompted tributes from countries including Russia.
Hundreds of Russians gathered Thursday in front of the statue of the Cuban Revolution leader in Moscow, where Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said that “Fidel Castro is a model and an example to follow (…) in these difficult times, in order to achieve victory over the most evil forces in history.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent messages earlier this week to Raul Castro and Díiz-Canel in which he described Fidel Castro as “a symbol of freedom, justice and patriotism both for Cubans themselves and for millions of people in different countries around the world.”
Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping also sent a congratulatory message to the island on the centennial of Castro’s birth, highlighting his role “in laying the foundations for and advancing” bilateral relations, which, he said, “have become a model for cooperation between socialist countries.”
Likewise, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday expressed his gratitude for “the encouragement” Fidel Castro gave him during his political career and voiced his hope that “fraternity and justice will endure amid adversity” for the Cuban people, in a message sent to Havana through intellectual and theologian Frei Betto.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.