Cuban dictator Fidel Castro delivered a shocking speech Tuesday to the Communist Party that he put in power a half-century ago, telling party members he is nearing the end of his life and exhorting them to help his ideas survive.
Castro’s health has long been a matter of speculation, but for the first time he acknowledged publicly that he is nearing the end of his life.
“I’ll be 90 years old soon,” Castro said in his most extensive public appearance in years. “Soon I’ll be like all the others.”
Castro spoke as the government announced that his brother Raul will retain the Cuban Communist Party’s highest post alongside his hardline second-in-command. That announcement and Fidel Castro’s speech together delivered a resounding message that the island’s revolutionary generation will remain in control even as its members age and die, relations with the U.S. are normalized, and popular dissatisfaction grows over the country’s economic performance.
Shortly after the congress ended Tuesday afternoon, government-run television showed rare images of Fidel Castro seated at the dais in Havana’s Convention Palace, speaking to the crowd in a strong if occasionally trembling voice. State television showed at least one delegate tearful with emotion, and the crowd greeting the revolutionary leader with shouts of “Fidel!”
“This may be one of the last times I speak in this room,” Fidel Castro said. “We must tell our brothers in Latin America and the world that the Cuban people will be victorious.”
Fifty-five years after Fidel Castro declared that Cuba’s revolution was socialist and began installing a single-party system and centrally planned economy, the Cuban government is battling a deep crisis of credibility.
With no memory of the revolution’s heady first decades, younger Cubans complain bitterly about low state salaries of about $25 a month that leave them struggling to afford food and other staple goods. Cuba’s creaky state-run media and cultural institutions compete with flashy foreign programming shared online and on memory drives passed hand-to-hand. Emigration to the United States and other countries has soared to one of its highest points since the revolution.
Limited openings to private enterprise have stalled, and the government describes capitalism as a threat even as it appears unable to increase productivity in Cuba’s inefficient, theft-plagued networks of state-run enterprises.
The ideological gulf between government and people widened last month when President Barack Obama became the first U.S. leader to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years and delivered a widely praised speech live on state television urging Cubans to forget the history of hostility between the U.S. and Cuba and move toward a new era of normal diplomatic and economic relations.
The Cuban government offered little unified response until the Communist Party’s Seventh Party Congress began Saturday, and one high-ranking official after another warned that the U.S. was still an enemy that wants to take control of Cuba. They said Obama’s trip represented an ideological “attack.”
That defensive stance was reinforced Tuesday as the congress ended and the government said Raul Castro, 84, would remain the party’s first secretary and Jose Ramon Machado Ventura would hold the post of second secretary for at least part of a second five-year term.
Castro currently is both president and party first secretary. The decision means Castro could hold a Communist Party position at least as powerful as the presidency even after he is presumably replaced by a younger president in 2018. Castro indicated that he and Machado may also step down before the next congress in 2021, saying this year’s was the last to be led by Cuba’s revolutionary generation.
Machado Ventura, 85, who fought alongside the Castro brothers to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, is known as an enforcer of Communist orthodoxy and voice against some of the biggest recent economic reforms.
He often has been employed by the Castros to impose order in areas seen as lacking discipline, most recently touring the country to crack down on private sellers of fruits, vegetables and other agricultural goods. While Raul Castro opened Cuba’s faltering agricultural economy to private enterprise, the government has blamed a new class of private farmers and produce merchants for a rise in prices.
Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer at The New Yorker who is writing a biography of Fidel Castro, called the day’s events “a way of restoring some kind of essential revolutionary presence or muscle in the room after the star-struck effect of Obama.”
The Cuban government appears to be engaging in “overcompensation for being bowled over a little bit by Obama’s unexpectedly elegant and charismatic performance in Havana,” said Anderson, who covered the visit. “Cubans who aren’t prepared for the full extent of what he was saying, it took them aback.”
The party congress had been criticized for secrecy and a lack of discussion about substantive new reforms. Castro’s speech and his brother’s promise that more extensive public debate would come in the weeks and months after the congress appeared to have at least temporarily quelled discontent among the party ranks.
“The Cuban people are followers of Fidel and he’s a force that still has a lot of power,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a party member who had publicly criticized the secrecy of the congress. “It’s easy to love Fidel now that he doesn’t have a public position. He’s a person who always had a coherent idea and that makes him an exalted figure.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
time to meet your maker infidel errrr Fidel. wonder how its playing on your mind?
R-
time to meet your maker infidel errrr Fidel. wonder how its playing on your mind?
He already said it, as quoted in the article above: soon, he will be like all the others – meaning, presumably, like all those he had imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
He’s about to find out that Communism was wrong; there is, indeed, a Just God who awaits.
So true. I wonder if he’ll have a catholic funeral? I suppose, they bury people now who have committed suicide, so imprisoning a nation to slavery and worse is what? how about Stalin, Hitler, the asian rulers, all using humanity by and for evil means…….but we also hear there’s no sin so great that cannot be forgiven……leave his soul to God to deal with……We, here on earth, have no idea how these people are dealt with. May God have mercy on his soul………
The doors of hell will be wide open for this monster.
Hey, Castro, what are you waiting for, go ahead and DIE, you have Americas permission, so long BUSTER, so-long, good-bye, see you later , alligator,
Very true …the experiment didn’t work .Now they try it in Venezuela ! !
Sanders & company & their supporters haven’t gotten the message YET ! Socialism just doesn’t work ! Communism is even worse !!
All the people you and your cohorts have murdered will be waiting to pass judgment on your crimes.
Burn in hell you SOB
Why did you wait this long? You should have died eons ago, and made the many Cubans in exile very happy.
You who plan to elect Hillery can celebrate the Death of Castro and that of our Country as we have known it at the same time. Think about the consequences of your actions. Does peeing next to a transsexual who looks forward to peeing next to your young granddaughter appeal to you. If so continue to pull the Jackass Lever (democrat symbol)
Great post Citizen !!!!
I am pulling the Jack ass lever to elect Hilary the democrat and not Donald the biggest Jack ass trying to pass himself as an elephant in the republican party .
Yea, you wetback. You’re afraid Trump will send your azz packing. BTW: how is an illegal allowed to vote? Oh, I forgot, you’re voting dumbocrap.
Those who would vote for either a Clinton or a Bush slave are brain dead. If You cannot see that Clinton and Cruz work for the same banksters who have destroyed American Industry or worse if you are glad they did you are a traitor and you deserve to have your sons and daughters forever struggling for less and less wages.. Trump will rebuild American Industry. He does this not form any altruism but from pure self interest. Grow a brain or stay out of the voting booth. JJB
GOOD!
Can you take your BFF Muslim in chief. and all of the Guantanamo inmates with you?
Quick, someone tell the muslim in chief so he can go hold his hand!
The gitmo detainees should all be released right there in CUBA. Castro would be a very gracious host.His prisons are not as lavish as GITMO.
spelling not good
What a shame, that is of O’Bummer going to visit this moribund scum of the earth.
What a waste of ” diplomacy “, even the Cubans don’t trust him and now rebuke him.
As the Castro assasins and Machado get to the end of the line, it becomes obvious
that even in hell their private reservations are in jeopardy.
There must be a place where all the misery they have planted they will harvest.
The vivid example of evil announces his death, wow another picture opportunity.
In the article it is not mentioned at all that his regime is not at all socialist but
criminal,communist, totalitarian, demonic and highly hypocritical.
The legacy of his ideas Fidel would like to survive. Imagine, what a dellusion.
This one time student of psychology went nuts early in his youth.
What has been and is left of his “ideas” is FIDEL’S INFERNO.
Good ridance!
Goodbye Mr. Castro you should have died a long time ago and let the people in your country live a better life. I hope you burn in hell and take your brother w/you and come back and get the rest of your ruthless comrades.
Everything O’Bozo puts his hand on winds up being a disaster. What a shame he didn’t visit in 09. Then the so called media would have had 7+ years to try and justify Socialism, or a least get a real inside look at what it looks like after being hidden from the public eye for 50 years.
I still believe the Cuban people will rise and save them selves one day because many of the Castro’s right hand people are just waiting for Fidel rauel and machado to die so they can get help.
He and many more like him from the past are going to have to face God. There will be 1000 years of peace where he will have a chance to change and Satan will be locked up. If he does not change [ his attitude and to love and obey God ], then he will seize to exist. It makes you wonder, if with all the hurt he and others like him [ Hitler for one ] have put on the people that they were to serve was worth the possibility of being burned up forever?
$25.00 a month for most wages???? OMG … Those poor people. Bet the power people make a hell of a lot more than that. Tragic.
AND OUR POTUS OBAMA WANTS TO GIVE THE TYRANTS A KEY TO THE FRONT DOOR WHILE THEY LET THEIR PEOPLE STARVE…..IDIOTS!
When Fidel dies I believe his transition to the other dimension will be horrific filled with the demons of his past. Have a nice trip you scumbag. God awaits you.
It’s too bad that after Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill the Americans in charge couldn’t have done more for the Cuban people. We did more for the Philippine Islanders, and they were involved in the same Spanish American War. Possibly because Arthur McArthur (General McArthur’s father) was the Governor of the US occupied Philippine Islands. Cuba didn’t have this benefit. It was controlled by dictators and gangsters-lastly by Castro. Maybe his death will bring the Cubans better luck and life.
GOOD….DIE COMMIE—-DIE
I was hoping that news of his death was going to be more than the fact he is slowly dying from old age. I’m going to guess that his death will not come soon enough for the Cubans who have had to put up with his failed leadership for the last 50+ years. Thanks to the Castros’ embrace of communism the people of Cuba live in poverty and have few freedoms. I don’t think many Cubans will look open the Castros’ reign of error as a golden period in their nation’s history.
I’ve got to hand it to President Obama. I criticized him for his apology on behalf of the United States. It takes a real talent to be able to offend everyone off the same action. I’m surprised Castro did not embrace Obama after he learned that Obama looked so fondly upon communism and Cuba’s implementation of it.
Fidel, you probably don’t read any of this, but I would like you to know that there is always time before death to change your mind, which is the word repent in the Bible. All of us,have been wrong about things in our life, but when we are wrong about what happens when we die it lasts forever. All of us are going to live with the Lord or in hell by one decision we make while we are alive & that is whether we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior or reject Him. You & others have a choice to make before you do die & you should at least seek the truth about Jesus & what He did for you in paying for every sin for all of us while He was on the cross.
I have not said that to Fidel
Fidel, every day you are getting closer to the front of the line.
Nos hacen un favor … prisa!!
No kidding, We are all dying day by day. But for him, the sooner, the better.
The shot to send you to hell 50 years ago Fiddel was a opportunity missed, it could have saved thousands from your prisons and horror chambers…..