Cuba’s historic revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory, embraced Soviet-style communism, defied the power of 10 US Presidents, and survived the eclipse of global communism during his half century rule of Cuba, has died at age 90.
His younger brother, President Raul Castro, announced the news shortly after midnight (10.30 am IST on Saturday) but gave no details of the cause of death.
Fidel Castro crushed opposition at home from the moment he took power in 1959 to lead the communist Caribbean island through the Cold War. He stepped aside only in 2006 after intestinal surgery. For defenders of the revolution, Castro was a hero who protected the ordinary people against capitalist domination.
For his opponents, including thousands of Cuban exiles living in the United States, he was a cruel tyrant. Castro eventually lived to see the restoration of diplomatic ties with Washington last year. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.
“The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening,” Raul Castro said in a solemn voice, adding, “in compliance with Comrade Fidel’s expressed will, his remains will be cremated early in the morning” on Saturday
The Cuban Government on Saturday decreed nine days of mourning. From November 26 to December 4, “public activities and shows will cease, the national flag will fly at half-mast on public buildings and military installations,” a statement from the state executive said.
Castro’s ashes will be buried in the southeastern city of Santiago on December 4 after a four-day procession through the country, it added. Castro’s death drew strong reactions from world leaders.
“The name of this distinguished statesman is rightly considered the symbol of an era in modern world history,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telegram to Raul Castro.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the late leader left a “deep mark in the history of mankind.” “Comrade Castro will live forever,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping in a message read on television. “Castro was “a great man of our time... History and people will remember him.”
French President Francois Hollande said Castro “represented, for Cubans, pride in rejecting external domination.”
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Cuba’s main ally in the region, said on Twitter: “It is up to us to continue his legacy and carry his flag of independence.” In the streets of Miami, home to the bulk of the US Cuban community, euphoric crowds waved flags and danced, banging on pots and drums and honking their car horns.
“It’s sad that one finds joy in the death of a person ---- but that person should never have been born,” said Pablo Arencibia, 67, a teacher who fled Cuba 20 years ago.
Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 as a black-bearded, cigar-chomping 32-year-old, in a revolution against former dictator Fulgencio Batista. “When this war is over, a much longer greater war will begin: the war that I am going to wage against them,” the United States, he had said in 1958.
He endured more than 600 assassination attempts, according to his aides, and the disastrous US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in 1961. “If I am considered a myth, the United States deserves the credit,” he said in 1988.
Castro was at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, as the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Eventually the Soviet Union backed down in its bid to station strategic missiles on Cuban soil. Born August 13, 1926 to a prosperous Spanish immigrant landowner and a Cuban mother of humble background, Castro was a quick learner and a keen baseball player.
His political path was set when he formed a guerrilla opposition to the US-backed government of Batista, who had seized power in a 1952 coup. In 1953 Castro led a small rebel force that attacked a major military base, the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, in a bid to oust Batista. The drive failed. Castro was put on trial, and in a self-defense speech said he did not care if was convicted. “History will absolve me,” he famously said.
After two years of prison Castro went into exile in Mexico and organised followers for their ultimately triumphant uprising. On December 2, 1956 the rebels sailed to southeastern Cuba on the ship Granma. Twenty-five months later, they ousted Batista and Castro was named prime minister.
Castro threw Cuba’s lot in with the Soviet Union, which bankrolled his regime until 1989, when the Eastern Bloc’s collapse sent Cuba’s economy plunging.