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| Military cadets hold pictures of Fidel Castro during a rally at the Revolution Plaza in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. Regional leaders and tens of thousands of Cubans filled Havana's Plaza of the Revolution Tuesday night for a service honoring Fidel Castro on the wide plaza where the Cuban leader delivered fiery speeches to mammoth crowds in the years after he seized power. Fidel Castro passed away Friday Nov. 25. He was 90. |
HAVANA
(AP) -- Regional leaders and tens of thousands of Cubans filled
Havana's Plaza of the Revolution Tuesday night for a service honoring
Fidel Castro on the wide plaza where the Cuban leader delivered fiery
speeches to mammoth crowds in the years after he seized power.
The
presidents of Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Panama, South Africa
and Zimbabwe, along with leaders of a host of smaller Caribbean
nations, flew in to Havana to pay tribute to Castro, who died Friday
night at 90.
South African President Jacob
Zuma praised Cuba under Castro for its record on education and health
care and its support for African independence struggles.
Castro
will be remembered as "a great fighter for the idea that the poor have a
right to live with dignity," Zuma told the crowd.
The
rally began with black-and-white revolution-era footage of Castro and
other guerrillas on a big screen and the playing of the Cuban national
anthem. Castro's younger brother and successor, President Raul Castro,
saluted.
Cuban state media reported that an
urn containing Fidel Castro's ashes was being kept in a room at the
Defense Ministry where Raul and top Communist Party officials paid
tribute the previous evening.
During the day,
lines stretched for hours outside the Plaza of the Revolution, the heart
of government power. In Havana and across the island, people signed
condolence books and an oath of loyalty to Castro's sweeping May 2000
proclamation of the Cuban revolution as an unending battle for
socialism, nationalism and an outsize role for the island on the world
stage.
"I feel a deep sadness, but immense
pride in having had him near," said Ana Beatriz Perez, a 50-year-old
medical researcher who was advancing in the slow-moving line with the
help of crutches. "His physical departure gives us strength to continue
advancing in his ideology. This isn't going away, because we are
millions."
"His death is another revolution,"
said her husband, Fidel Diaz, who predicted that it will prompt many to
"rediscover the ideas of the commander for the new generations."
Tribute
sites were set up in hundreds of places across the island as the
government urged Cubans to reaffirm their belief in a socialist,
single-party system that in recent years has struggled to maintain the
fervor that was widespread at the triumph of the 1959 revolution.
Many
mourners came on their own accord, but thousands were sent in groups by
the communist government, which still employs about 80 percent of the
working people in Cuba despite the growth of the private sector under
Raul.
Inside the memorial, thousands walked
through three rooms with near-identical displays featuring the 1962
Alberto Korda photograph of the young Castro in the Sierra Maestra
mountains, bouquets of white flowers and an array of Castro's medals
against a black backdrop, framed by honor guards of soldiers and
children in school uniforms. The ashes of the 90-year-old former
president did not appear to be on display.
Signs
read: "The Cuban Communist Party is the only legitimate heir of the
legacy and authority of the commander in chief of the Cuban Revolution,
comrade Fidel Castro."
"Goodbye commander.
Your ideas remain here with us," 64-year-old retiree Etelbina Perez said
between sobs, dabbing at her eyes with a brown handkerchief. "I feel
great pain over his death. I owe my entire life to him. He brought me
out of the mountains. I was able to study thanks to him."
The scene was played out on a smaller scale at countless places across the country.
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 man who dominated the lives of generations.
Since his
death on Friday night, state-run newspapers, television and radio have
run wall-to-wall tributes to Fidel Castro, broadcasting non-stop footage
of his speeches, interviews and foreign trips, interspersed with
adulatory remembrances by prominent Cubans.
