Military parade underway without Castro
A massive military parade to mark the 50th anniversary of the date Fidel Castro and fellow rebels landed by boat in Cuba to launch their revolution started today without the ailing leader.
Cubans and Castro supporters from around the world had speculated all week whether the leader, recovering from intestinal surgery, would show. The event culminates five days of birthday celebrations for Castro, but he has yet to make an appearance.
The Cuban leader turned 80 on August 13 but delayed the celebrations to give him time to recover from surgery two weeks earlier for intestinal bleeding. He has not been seen in public since July 26, and few details about his condition have been released by Cuba’s communist government.
Acting President Raul Castro, who is Fidel’s younger brother and the island’s defence minister, led the event today, which was also attended by Latin American leaders and personalities including Bolivian President Evo Morales, Haitian President Rene Preval and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Castro could still show up before the end of the event. A no-show, however, was likely to spark new rumours on the severity of his condition and the possibility that he may not return to power.
Cuban officials insist Castro is recovering, but US officials say they believe he suffers from some kind of inoperable cancer and won’t live through the end of 2007. He has appeared thin and pale in photographs and videos released by the government since he temporarily ceded power to his brother.
In a half-hour speech by Raul Castro at the event, no mention was made regarding the elder Castro’s absence. The acting president instead focused on the ills of the US government and the Cuban anniversary, saying it marked “a transcendental act in our history”.
Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, which replaced the military that existed before the Cuban Revolution, traces its roots to December 2, 1956, when 82 rebels landed on the island on a yacht – the Granma – that sailed from Mexico.
The Castro brothers were among the fewer than two dozen rebels who survived the landing to reach the mountains, where they launched a guerrilla war against then-President Fulgencio Batista. Their revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959.
Fidel Castro purportedly sent a message to those celebrating his birthday earlier this week, telling a crowd of 5,000 supporters at the opening event Tuesday at a Havana theatre that he was too sick to meet them.
“I direct myself to you, intellectuals and prestigious personalities of the world, with a dilemma,” said a note read at the event. “I could not meet with you in a small locale, only in the Karl Marx Theatre where all the visitors would fit, and I was not yet in condition, according to the doctors, to face such a colossal encounter.
“My very close friends, who have done me the honour of visiting our country, I sign off with the great pain of not having been able to personally give thanks and hugs to each and every one of you,” the note read.
More than 1,300 politicians, artists and intellectuals from around the globe were attending the tribute to the man who governed Cuba for 47 years.
