Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader of revolution, dies at 90 Cuba's former president Fidel Castro, one of the world's longest-serving and most iconic leaders, has died aged 90.

His younger brother and successor as president Raul Castro announced the news on state television. Castro toppled the government in 1959, introducing a Communist revolution. He defied the US for decades, surviving many assassination plots. His supporters said he had given Cuba back to the people. Critics saw him as a dictator. 

Ashen and grave, President Castro told the nation in an unexpected late night broadcast on state television that Fidel Castro had died and would be cremated later on Saturday. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening (03:29 GMT Saturday)," he said. "Towards victory, always!" he added, using a revolutionary slogan. A period of official mourning has been declared on the island until 4 December, when his ashes will be laid to rest in the south-eastern city of Santiago.

Barring the occasional newspaper column, Fidel Castro had essentially been retired from political life for several years. In April, Fidel Castro gave a rare speech on the final day of the country's Communist Party congress. "I'll soon be 90," the former president said, adding that this was "something I'd never imagined". "Soon I'll be like all the others," Fidel Castro said, suggesting his "turn" to pass away was coming.

Castro was the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century. He temporarily handed over power to his brother in 2006 as he was recovering from an acute intestinal ailment. Raul Castro officially became president two years later.

News of his death left some in Havana stunned. "I always said it couldn't be," said one woman, a government employee. "Even though they said it now, I say it can't be." How he defied the US Throughout the Cold War, Fidel Castro was a thorn in Washington's side.

An accomplished tactician on the battlefield, he and his small army of guerrillas overthrew the military leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 to widespread popular support. Within two years of taking power, he declared the revolution to be Marxist-Leninist in nature and allied the island nation firmly to the Soviet Union.
Despite the constant threat of a US invasion as well as the long-standing economic embargo on the island, Castro managed to maintain a communist revolution in a nation just 90 miles (145km) off the coast of Florida. Despised by his critics as much as he was revered by his followers, he maintained his rule through 10 US presidents and survived scores of attempts on his life by the CIA.
He established a one-party state, with hundreds of supporters of the Batista government executed. Political opponents have been imprisoned, the independent media suppressed. Thousands of Cubans have fled into exile.

Latin American leaders have been quick to pay tribute. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Castro was a "great friend" of Mexico, while to El Salvador's President Salvador Sanchez Ceren he was an "eternal companion". Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said "revolutionaries of the world must follow his legacy". The Soviet Union's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said: "Fidel stood up and strengthened his country during the harshest American blockade, when there was colossal pressure on him." Russian President Vladimir Putin described him as a "reliable and sincere friend" of Russia, while Chinese President Xi Jinping said "Comrade Castro will live forever". For French President Francois Hollande, Castro embodied Cuba's revolution in both its "hopes" and its later "disappointments". Pope Francis, who met Castro, an atheist, when he visited Cuba in 2015, called his death "sad news" and sent "sentiments of grief".

In Miami, where there is a large Cuban community, there have been celebrations in some parts of the city, with people banging pots and cheering. A Cuban exile group, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, said Castro left "legacy of intolerance" and had set up a "vicious totalitarian regime".

What happens next? Will Grant, BBC News, Cuba Although the announcement of Fidel Castro's death caught many Cubans unawares, it can't be said that they weren't partly expecting it. In a sense, they have been preparing for this moment, a post-Fidel Cuba, for several years now as he retired from public life and largely disappeared from view. But now that it has actually arrived, some are asking whether it will make any political different to Cuba's trajectory.

Cuba began economic reforms when Castro was still alive. It's unlikely to, mainly because Raul Castro has already been implementing economic changes intended to attract foreign direct investment and ease the tight restrictions on ordinary Cubans. Plus, of course, there is the new rapprochement with Washington. While it's still not clear what a Trump presidency will mean in that regard, those changes are unlikely to be reversed because of Castro's death. Nor will Cuba change its one-party political system in his absence. Politically, his legacy lives on.

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Sobresalió por su gran espíritu revolucionario y su ansia de conocer y resolver los problemas de los más pobres / En 1955 conoció en México a Fidel Castro, uniéndose a la lucha para emancipar a Cuba.
Tal día como hoy, hace 85 años, nació en Rosario, Argentina, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, o simplemente Che Guevara, como sería mundialmente conocido, quien sobresalió por su gran espíritu revolucionario y su ansia de conocer y resolver los problemas de los más pobres, sometidos históricamente a la opresión y el desprecio de clases sociales y políticas cuyo único horizonte es la acumulación de bienes y privilegios mediante la explotación del hombre por el hombre.

Desde 1953 viajó por Perú, Ecuador, Venezuela y Guatemala, descubriendo la miseria dominante entre las masas de Iberoamérica y la omnipresencia del imperialismo norteamericano en la región. En 1955 conoció en México a Fidel y Raúl Castro, uniéndose a la lucha emancipadora que culminó con el triunfo de la Revolución Cubana en 1959.

Consciente de los peligros del burocratismo, abandonó Cuba en 1965 para continuar la lucha por la liberación mundial. Primero marchó al Congo, convencido de que sólo la acción insurreccional armada era eficaz contra el imperialismo, y al año siguiente volvió a Iberoamérica para promover una revolución de ámbito continental, eligiendo a Bolivia para instalar una guerrilla que pudiera irradiar su influencia hacia Argentina, Chile, Perú, Brasil y Paraguay.

En Bolivia intentó poner en práctica su teoría revolucionaria, según la cual la acción armada crearía las condiciones para una insurrección popular a través de la guerra de guerrillas. Sin embargo, su acción no fue comprendida por las masas bolivianas y, aislado en una región selvática en donde padeció la agudización del asma que siempre sufrió, fue delatado por campesinos locales, cayendo en una emboscada del ejército boliviano en la región de Valle Grande, donde fue herido, apresado y, finalmente, asesinado.

Dado que el Che se había convertido en un símbolo para los jóvenes de todo el mundo, los militares bolivianos, aconsejados por la CIA, quisieron destruir el mito revolucionario, exponiendo su cadáver, fotografiándose con él y enterrándolo en secreto.

En 1997 los restos del Che Guevara fueron localizados, exhumados y trasladados a Cuba, donde fueron enterrados con todos los honores por el Presidente Fidel Castro. La figura del Che Guevara tiene las extraordinarias dimensiones de un visionario que luchó por superar la injusticia del capitalismo. Su ejemplo implica un compromiso real a favor de los oprimidos y el desarrollo de una conciencia orientada a la liberación ideológica, con base en el trabajo creador y humanizante.

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He would be 87 years old today...

“No contact with Manila,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara wrote several times in his diary as he marched to his death in Bolivia and, behind the phrase, is Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s betrayal and abandonment of the legendary guerrilla fighter, Cuban journalist Alberto Müller said.

“Manila” was the codeword for Cuba, Müller told Efe in an interview ahead of the presentation at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair of his book “Che Guevara. Valgo más vivo que muerto.”

The title comes from a phrase attributed to Che when he was found in the Bolivian village of La Higuera and contrasts the guerrilla’s desire to live with Castro’s order to avoid being captured alive, highlighting the “great differences” existing in 1967 between the two revolutionaries, Müller said.

Müller said there was a guerrilla unit in Havana ready to deploy and rescue Guevara, but “Fidel never authorized the mission,” abandoning the guerrilla leader to his fate.

Che was shot dead on Oct. 9, 1967, in La Higuera.

“He died in a pitiful manner. Without medications for his asthma, without boots and only rags wrapped around his feet, without water, without food and without allies,” Müller said.

To understand why Castro withdrew his support from Guevara, the author takes the reader back to what he considers a turning point in the relationship between them, the 1965 Afro-Asian Conference in Algiers.

Guevara’s address to the assembly meant “a break up with the Soviet Union that harmed Che’s relationship with Fidel,” the author said.

Guevara criticized Moscow, accusing the USSR, without mentioning it by name, of being “accomplices of U.S. imperialist exploitation,” just when the Cuban leader was about to conclude agreements on military cooperation with the Kremlin.

The estrangement between Guevara and Castro increased over time, and deepened when the Cuban leader, without consulting the Argentine-born guerrilla, decided to withdraw Cuban fighters from the Congo, leading to the mission in Bolivia that Müller describes as an “induced suicide.”

“Why Bolivia?” Müller would ask Castro if he were to interview him.

“Che’s posture ran against Fidel’s interests,” the author said. “Che became a pest, an inconvenience for the Cuban Revolution, a pebble in the shoe.”

Müller said several historians and Che biographers that helped in his research agreed with him that “Guevara wanted to go to Argentina, his homeland, to liberate it, and in Havana they invented the Bolivia campaign for him.”

The author said he found out that two years before Guevara’s final mission, Castro had acknowledged that Bolivia “didn’t have conditions for a guerrilla movement” and the peasants there did not need a revolution because agrarian reform in the 1950s had given them ownership of the land.

Even so, the Cuban leader sent Guevara to Bolivia and months later cut off the link with supporters in La Paz, increasing the guerrillas’ isolation and worsening their situation.

“I think Che must have died being very aware of his betrayal,” Müller said. EFE

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Watch an amazing documentary about Che titled Che - Un hombre nuevo (Che - A new man). The original language of the film is Spanish, but with a bunch of huge thanks to our CheMenna, you can enjoy it with English subtitles.