By PETER ORSI — Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuba celebrated the 60th anniversary of the onset of its revolution Friday, with the aging Communist leader who took part in the initial failed uprising vowing to focus the future on younger generations that have been slow to come to power.

Wearing an olive-green military uniform and a broad-brimmed hat against the sun, President Raul Castro spoke to a crowd of thousands outside a military barracks still visibly pockmarked with bullet holes from the 1953 assault that is considered the beginning of the rebellion. Castro was just 22 when he followed his older brother Fidel's lead in a seemingly suicidal attack on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago, along with more than 100 other mostly youthful rebels opposed to strongman Fulgencio Batista. "The years have passed, but this continues to be a revolution of young people, as we were on July 26, 1953," Castro said. The Moncada raid was a disaster for the rebels, and many of them were tortured and killed. But it helped make Fidel Castro the focus of opposition to Batista, whom he overthrew six years later after surviving prison and exile, transforming him into a hero for revolutionaries around the globe. Yet the youthful insurgents of 1953 and 1959, many of them now in their 80s, still hold key positions of power in Cuba. While Raul Castro has led a series of economic and political reforms, young leaders are just now beginning to emerge.
Earlier this year, 53-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel was named vice president and became the first person not of the revolutionary generation to hold the No. 2 spot. "The historic generation is giving way to the new saplings with tranquility and serene confidence, based on (their) demonstrated preparation and capacity for maintaining the revolution and socialism," Castro said. At Friday's ceremony, a giant banner hanging from the barracks with an image of Fidel Castro raising a triumphant fist was the only sign of the retired leader. A near-fatal intestinal illness forced him from office seven years ago, and he rarely appears in public these days.
In speeches, allied leaders recalled Moncada as an act that inspired rebellion, both armed and political, across the Americas in the decades that followed. "The history of Latin America can best be understood if we mark a before and an after the assault on the Moncada barracks," said Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. "Fundamentally this was a revolution of dignity, of self-esteem for Latin Americans," said Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, who joined an armed leftist guerrilla group in his own country in the 1960s and was imprisoned for more than a decade. "It seeded us with dreams, it filled us with (the spirit of Don) Quixote." The July 26 holiday is sometimes used to make major announcements or address current affairs, but Castro hardly strayed from the past tense in a speech almost entirely focused on history. He did not mention a shipment of Cuban weaponry recently seized in Panama on its way to North Korea. Nor did he address the ongoing saga of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and his quest for asylum beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
And there was no new word about the future of Castro's reforms, which have seen changes such as the legalization of home and car sales, relaxed restrictions on foreign travel and limited openings for independent small businesses and cooperatives. One of the Cuban government's most outspoken critics, dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, was unimpressed. "A nation cannot be represented and led by men who have more memories than projects," Sanchez tweeted.
Castro also extolled recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy walloped Santiago last year, and echoed common talking points such as Havana's demand that four Cuban agents sentenced to long prison terms in the United States on spy charges be returned. Meanwhile allies including Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega heaped praise on Havana and bashed capitalism and the United States, railing against "imperialism" and the 51-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. "We condemn the criminal, illegal blockade perpetrated by the world's biggest power against our brother people," Patino said. "The backyard of the United States," he said, "is no longer in Latin America."

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/07/26/5055868/cuba-marks-60th-anniversary-of.html#storylink=cp

Fidel Castro to appear on Cuban television and radio

Mon Jul 12, 2010
HAVANA (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has lived in seclusion since falling ill four years ago, will appear on Cuban television and radio on Monday evening to discuss his theory that the world is on the verge of nuclear war, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said in its Monday online edition. The appearance will mark the second time in less than a week that the suddenly resurgent 83-year-old has made a public appearance, after staying out of view, except in occasional photographs and videos, since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.

Last Wednesday, he made a visit to a Havana scientific center that was disclosed in a blog on Saturday. Castro writes opinion columns, or "Reflections," for Cuba's state-run media that in recent weeks have focused on his prediction that nuclear war will soon break out, sparked by a conflict between the United States and Iran over international sanctions against Iran's nuclear activities. "The empire is at the point of committing a terrible error that nobody can stop. It advances inexorably toward a sinister fate," he wrote on July 5. The "empire" is how Castro usually refers to the United States, his bitter foe from the time he took power in Cuba in a 1959 revolution. In a column published on Sunday night, Castro said the "principal purpose" of his writings has been to "warn international public opinion of what was occurring." He said he has reached his dire conclusion based in part on "observing what happened, as the political leader that I was during many years, confronting the empire, its blockades and its unspeakable crimes." The columns have attracted little attention internationally and caused little reaction in Cuba, but Castro promised to continue his lonely fight to warn the world of the coming disaster. "I don't hesitate in running risks of compromising my modest moral authority," he wrote on Sunday. "I will continue writing 'Reflections' about the topic." Castro ruled Cuba for 49 years before provisionally ceding power to younger brother Raul Castro following his 2006 surgery. Citing age and infirmity, he officially resigned in February 2008 and Raul Castro, now 79, was elected president by the National Assembly. Fidel Castro's reappearance comes as Cuba is preparing to release 52 political prisoners, all jailed in a crackdown on the opposition in 2003 while he was still in power.

The Mystifying Life and Many Deaths of Cuba's Talisman

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 7, 2009; A08
MEXICO CITY

On the front page of Cuba's state newspaper Granma last week, the lone star on the Cuban flag had mysteriously faded away in an old black-and-white photograph announcing a celebration of patriot José Martí. Copies quickly sold out as rumors flew across the island. What did it mean? Was it a portent? Had the inevitable finally happened? As it turned out, Fidel Castro was not dead. Just as he has not been dead for more than 50 years, ever since the United Press reported that he had been killed by government soldiers on Dec. 2, 1956, hours after returning to Cuba to wage guerrilla war. The missing star? Apparently a printing error.

But over the past two years, the subject of Castro's health has become an obsession among Cubans and Cuba watchers, and the fever peaked last month as word circulated that he was on his deathbed, which turned out not to be true. In fact, he was apparently up late Wednesday night, blogging about President Obama. Castro informed Obama that previous U.S. governments had pursued policies of criminal aggression, not that he was blaming Obama.
"On the contrary," Castro posted, "being born of a Kenyan Muslim father and a white American Christian deserves special merit in the context of U.S. society and I am the first to recognize that." The speculation about his continued viability is fueled by the fact that Castro, 82, has not been seen in public since the summer of 2006, when he underwent what is believed to have been intestinal surgery. The whereabouts and medical condition of the reformed cigar smoker are state secrets, even though he formally transferred power to his younger brother Raúl last year. "The fixation about the health of Fidel is without parallel," said Daniel P. Erikson, an analyst at the policy group Inter-American Dialogue and author of a new book, "The Cuba Wars," whose first chapter is titled "Die Another Day."

"The death speculation, the death obsession, about Castro is varsity league; nothing else is close," said Erikson, adding that interest in North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who disappeared from public view for months after reportedly suffering a stroke last summer, pales in comparison. "And this could go on for a very long time, for clearly Fidel is getting good health care, and it is, after all, Fidel Castro we're talking about. He does not give up easily."
Some Cuba experts say that the long, slow fade of Castro, rather than being a disaster for the communist government of Cuba, might serve to preserve the power of the ruling elite by easing the transition -- first from Fidel to Raúl, then from Raúl to a younger generation.
"It is as if Fidel has turned an actual crisis -- his inevitable death -- into another opportunity," said David Scott Palmer, a Cuba scholar and professor at Boston University, who says that Castro, in his essays, blogs and "reflections," is preparing the country for his final exit. "Little by little, Cuba gets used to the idea of life without Fidel. . . . He seems to be skillfully managing his own departure." Palmer and his colleagues stress that no one can predict what will happen when Castro dies. It is the same lack of information that has made it impossible to know much about Castro's health -- which leaves Cuba watchers with only the faintest clues to work with. So they peer at official photographs released by the government after state visits and parse his blog entries, looking for signs of gathering frailty or renewed vitality.

"For so long, for half a century, the stability of Cuba has depended on Fidel to manage the country's affairs. And his government doesn't want to break the spell. He is the talisman," the protective charm, Erikson said. And though many Cuban exiles will party in the streets of Miami on the day of his death, what happens on the island is the great unknown. Being wrong about Castro's health is almost a tradition among U.S. officials. In 2005, CIA analysts concluded that Castro was suffering from Parkinson's disease. A few days later, Castro gave a five-hour speech to a group of Havana University students and said he never felt better. In 2006, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said Castro was knocking on death's door. "Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer. . . . Months, not years," Negroponte said at a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters. Journalists have also had a tough time predicting the end. One of the most dedicated Cuba watchers, the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, foresaw a relatively rapid conclusion in his book "Castro's Final Hour." The book was published in 1992. Writing about the recent rumors of Castro's imminent death, the Chicago Tribune in an editorial got the mood right with the headline: "Castro is dying, again."

In a commentary published Sunday about the latest rumors, Manny Garcia, a senior editor at the Miami Herald, wrote that "Fidel Castro is the journalistic equivalent of a kidney stone -- a constant pain who never seems to go away, and you pray that he passes, soon." Last month, based on the rumors, the Herald sent reporters to cover Castro's death, again. Though he has not been seen in public, Castro does meet with visiting world leaders. He has been shown at undisclosed locations in photographs released by the government. Is he in a hospital room? A house? A government office? In November, he was pictured with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Castro, as is his custom now, was wearing his zippered track suit. He looked okay. But then the photographs stopped. Castro did not attend the 50th anniversary celebration of the revolution in Santiago on New Year's Day. Instead, he penned a very short note congratulating the Cuban people for their heroism. Then silence.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who is a close ally and frequent flier to Cuba, appeared to be saying something significant when he told his radio and television show audience last month: "We know that the Fidel who used to walk down streets and through towns at dawn, looking like a warrior, wearing his uniform and embracing his people, will not return." Instead, the Cuban leader "will remain in our memories." On Jan. 21, Castro met with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Afterward, Raúl Castro accompanied her to the Havana airport, where he told reporters, "Now you know that Fidel is fine." He said his brother spends days "exercising, thinking and reading a lot, advising me, helping me." A few days later, a photograph was released showing Fidel Castro greeting Fernández de Kirchner. He is standing and wearing his Adidas track suit. Fernández de Kirchner told reporters that she and Castro spoke for an hour, that he seemed healthy and that they talked politics.

Later, Chávez admitted that, "sure, there are once again some rumors that Fidel died" but that his Cuban ally was still "alive and kicking." So it seems. Because then Castro himself wrote one of his essays, explaining that he has been rereading all of his articles and other materials, reminiscing. "I have had the rare privilege to follow events for such a long time," he wrote. "I get information and think quietly about events. "I don't expect to enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama's first presidential term ends," he wrote. "I feel fine, but insist that no one should feel bound by my reflections, my state of health, or even my death."

Castro's Death: A 'Herald' Waiting Game/Headache

By Joe Strupp
Editor & Publisher
February 04, 2009 1:00 PM ET

NEW YORK: Is The Miami Herald just waiting for Fidel Castro to die? Well, according to at least one top editor, the ongoing waiting game has become a true, well, deathwatch. "At Miami Herald Media Company, Fidel Castro is the journalistic equivalent of a kidney stone -- a constant pain who never seems to go away, and you pray that he passes, soon," Manny Garcia, the paper's senior editor/news, writes in an online column today about the 82-year-old Cuban leader. "Castro is part of our collective newsroom psyche, even outside One Herald Plaza. You could be on an African safari when Fidel dies and you gotta come home. Publisher's orders."Adds Garcia in the blog posting, "Everywhere I travel, I take 'the Cuba plan,' a three-ring binder with every possible scenario for when Fidel dies. Calling-tree diagrams. Bank accounts. Satellite phones. Fixers. Fast boats."And Garcia is not alone. Editor Anders Gyllenhaal admits the plans are in place and bigger than for any other death-in-waiting: "There is no other story like this. What happened in Cuba, in many ways, built Miami."Gyllenhaal declined to offer too many specifics for the plan, other than to say a special section is likely and possibly an extra edition: "depending on when the news comes out." One of the reasons for such in-depth preparation, in addition to Castro's prominence locally, is the fact that the story will come out of a country that is difficult to cover. "We are not able to be in Cuba, so trying to cover that country - to move in and out - is a big part of it."Two former Herald editors also acknowledged to E&P the significance of the Castro preparation.Tom Fiedler, who edited the paper from 2001 to 2007, and now serves as dean of the college of communication at Boston University, said, "we had plans for Castro's death going back to the 90s. It was truly exhaustive, maybe more detailed than the Pentagon's plan to invade Iraq. We made sure we had laptops on the ground in Cuba that we could get to and people there who agreed to help us -- journalists and non-journalists."Martin Baron, currently editor of the Boston Globe who ran the Herald newsroom in 2000 and part of 2001, said, "sitting on my desk was a prototype of what the pages would look like, even a headline that said 'Castro Dies' or something to that effect."He adds: "It was clearly going to be a death beyond all other deaths in the way we covered it."Also involved is El Nuevo Herald, the paper's Spanish-language sister, which circulates in Cuba.Garcia notes in his column: "You've gotta understand that the Cadaver-in-Chief is our story and biggest challenge. The Cuban government will not give us a journalist's visa to report from there, claiming we are the exile's lapdogs, which is garbage. Meanwhile, some exiles call us Granma North."Probably not too surprising. Most newspapers who have a major figure in their news sphere who is, well, getting older, likely make contingency plans for such events. A few years ago, The Asheville (N.C.) Citizen, the closest daily paper to evangelist Billy Graham's hometown, revealed it had a 20-page special section ready to go when he passed on.Of course, Castro's impact is probably a bit more severe, given Miami's proximity to Cuba and its local Cuban-American community."We sit in meetings, long meetings, going over possible stories." Garcia writes. "Phrasing. Tone. Length. We got at least five different versions of Fidel's obit, pegged to the time of day or night he dies. We built a Web page for the big day -- dubbed the `Holy (bleep)' page."

Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.