Fidel Castro at 90 Still an Inspiration for Cubans Slow to Change Orthodoxy The Associated Press
go to original July 31, 2016

Artists paint images depicting former Cuban President Fidel Castro during a ceremony marking the 63rd anniversary of the July 26, 1953, rebel assault which former Cuban leader Fidel Castro led on the Moncada army barracks in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba. (Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

White-haired, thin and bent at nearly 90, Fidel Castro in person is a faint echo of the man who remade his country, defied the United States and fueled socialist uprisings around the world.

But 10 years after he handed control to his brother Raul, Cuba's former leader has taken on a powerful new role in a country suffering an economic crisis and debating its direction in a new era of normalization with Washington.

After a decade out of the public eye, Fidel Castro has surged back in the run-up to his Aug. 13 birthday as the inspiration for Cubans who want to maintain strict Communist orthodoxy in Cuba in the face of mounting pressures to loosen political control and allow more private enterprise.

"We reiterate our commitment to stay faithful to the ideas he's fought for throughout his life and to keep the spirit of resistance, struggle and dialectic thought alive," Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, the hard-line second secretary of the Cuban Communist Party told the nation Tuesday at the celebration of Castro's 1953 attack on a government barracks.

The peak of Castro's return to public prominence came April 19 at the closing session of the Cuban Communist Party's 7th Congress. The three-day gathering featured a string of speeches denouncing President Barack Obama's visit to Cuba the month before, in which the U.S. leader called on Cubans to look toward a future of reconciliation and greater freedom.



Read the rest at Fox News Latino

Related: 10 Years of Cuba Under Raul Castro: Eye on Economic Development (teleSUR)

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