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AN ENORMOUS RALLY has been held in Cuba’s capital, Havana, in honour of the country’s former leader Fidel Castro who died last weekend.
Leftist Latin American leaders in attendance have vowed to carry the torch of Castro’s revolution in honour of the late Cuban communist icon.
Hundreds of thousands of people packed the capital’s Revolution Square, chanting “I am Fidel!” across the vast esplanade where Castro gave many of his legendary, marathon speeches.
A giant picture of a young, bearded Castro in his guerrilla uniform and rifle hung on the National Library as his brother and successor, Raul Castro, waved at the crowd.
It was the end of two days of tributes in Havana, before Fidel’s ashes are taken on a four-day-long procession across the country later today.
One after the other, Latin American, African and Caribbean leaders – along with Greece’s prime minister Alexis Tsipras, the only European leader at the event – lionised the communist leader.
Ireland’s ambassador to Mexico, Sonja Hyland, attended the event as a diplomatic representative, the Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.
While Ireland has no embassy in Cuba, the Mexican ambassador doubles as Irish representative there via secondary diplomatic accreditation.
“Mission accomplished, comandante Fidel Castro,” said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose late mentor, Hugo Chavez, had a special bond with Castro.
Today it is up to us to raise the flags of independence of the great fatherland, today it is up to us to hold the flag of dignity and freedom of the people.
Maduro declared that Castro was “totally absolved by history”, in reference to the Cuban leader’s famous phrase “history will absolve me” at a trial following a failed uprising in 1953.
Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa praised Castro’s ideology, telling the crowd: “We will keep fighting for these ideas. We swear!”
Leaders praised Castro in almost religious tones, with Bolivian President Evo Morales saying: “Fidel is not dead… Fidel is more alive than ever, more necessary than ever.”
Raul Castro, 85, spoke last at the rally, expressing thanks for the “countless gestures of solidarity and affection from around the world” and ending with the revolutionary battle cry: “Until victory, always!”
Castro’s death, however, comes as Latin America’s left is losing ground.
Maduro is facing a deep economic crisis and fighting opposition attempts to hold a recall referendum, while Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was impeached in August and a conservative took over in Argentina last year.
Castro – who ruled from 1959 until illness forced him to hand power to his brother Raul in 2006 – died last Friday at the age of 90.
South African President Jacob Zuma hailed Castro as “one of the great heroes of the 20th century”, citing his opposition to apartheid and his deployment of Cuban troops to back Angola’s government against rebels in 1975.
Washington’s ‘significant concerns’
But several world leaders shunned the tribute, highlighting the divisive legacy of the major Cold War player.
The leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Canada dispatched others in their place, but even the presidents of friendly nations such as Russia, China and Iran sent deputies.
Castro spent decades feuding with the United States, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 missile crisis, backed guerrilla movements in Latin America and deployed his army to conflicts in Africa.
US President Barack Obama, who along with Raul Castro ended decades of enmity to restore diplomatic relations earlier this year, did not attend. A senior advisor and the top US diplomat in Cuba were designated, but without the status of a “presidential delegation”.
“We continue to have some significant concerns about the way the Cuban government currently operates, particularly with regard to protecting the basic human rights of the Cuban people,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
‘Caravan of freedom’
The rally followed two days during which Cubans, encouraged by the government, streamed past a picture of Castro inside the city square’s towering monument to 19th century independence hero Jose Marti.
“Fidel would be proud to see the square overflowing like this, especially with young people,” said 46-year-old teacher Tatiana Gonzalez.
Cubans were also urged to sign an oath of loyalty to Castro’s revolution in books placed in schools and other public buildings.
The urn holding Castro’s ashes will now be taken on a “caravan of freedom” across the country, retracing the route his guerrilla movement took to celebrate the toppling of dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
The commemorations are to end on Sunday, when the urn is laid to rest in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, where Marti is buried.
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Will we lower the flags on government buildings as they did for king abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
The U.S capitalist elite hated and feared Castro because he set a very dangerous example for them. This is why the illegal embargo of Cuba has lasted for decades and why they’ve attempted to murder Castro hundreds of times. Despite this, a small country under the jackboot of the world’s leading imperial power has an infinitely better public healthcare system and lower infant mortality rates than its “free market” imperial tormentor.
So the most powerful empire in the history of the planet with untold resources at its disposal is being outperformed in key areas of human wellbeing by a tiny isolated island nation that it’s trying desperately to crush.
Cuba has developed the Meningitis-B, Hepatitis-B and Dengue vaccines a treatment/vaccine for lung cancer and in a moment of supreme irony are making it available to the U.S.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/02/22/cuba-lung-cancer-vaccine_n_7267518.html
Cuba has also sent 300,000 health workers on international missions to over 150 countries worldwide and it’s literacy campaign has educated 10 million students around the world. Cuba also spent 3 decades fighting alongside the African people helping them to throw off the shackles of colonialism and played a key role in the downfall of South African Apartheid regime.
Though far from perfect, Cuba shows the potential of what can be achieved if society’s resources are used to meet the needs of the majority and not funneled into the gaping maw of the elite under the exploitative ideology of capitalism.
However the achievements of Cuba must not blind us to the problems. Although capitalism was overthrown, the socialist revolution was never completed in Cuba in that the working class did not take power and democratically manage society in their interests from the grass roots up to national government level. Instead Castro’s guerrillas and the communist party established a top down autocratic regime which had significant failings with a lack of democracy, bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency, limited freedom of expression etc etc. etc
If it was such great wouldn’t people be trying to get into the Castros Cuba to live in this perfect Utopia. Why are there large Cuban communities living throughout the U.S who speak of a completely different Cuba than the communist wet dream you have in your head.
@Billy Mooney: YAWN ! Funny thing is Billy loves harping on about his socialism lark, if he opened his mouth about any other topic in Cuba he would be lynched.
Funny how Socialism works isn’t it ?
@Billy Mooney:
Wally, they pay water charges in Cuba.
@Alan Cooke: Cue obvious response from Billy. that no one has done Socialism right yet … Elite, Evil Banks, Working Class, Major money, Key strokes, imperialism, Oppression, revolution, intelligence, etc etc.
Never a truer word spoken.
@Alan Cooke: Once, Twice or Three times ?????
Billy I met doctor in Cuba he was mending tires and also selling sinks. If it was any other country your lot would be going on about big pharma is evil when the medical advances over last 10 years on west have been astounding. Mind you I take nothing away from Cuba on CimaVax it’s a win for them. Fair play.when it comes to gene studies they have always been top notch. But try going to a pharmacy there. I did and they might have a pathetic one box of plasters as I witnessed. To fund gene therapy section I’d hate to see how many people were left in desperate poverty. Having been there I can tell you there is desperate poverty. I really thing the members of the aaa that God bless emjust don’t feel like working move to Cuba for a year. They would be delighted to come back to our dole. Dooooooo it go on.
@Paul: And there are millions of Cubans who would largely agree with the description of the country I’ve outlined above.
@Eye_c_u:
So the poverty in Cuba had nothing to do with the illegal 50 year embargo imposed by America? If the same sanctions were applied to Ireland we would be eating squirrels and rats for the past 40 years.
If it was that bad here we can just leave. Why don’t Cubans leave Billy?
Many do. They’ve sent hundreds of thousands of medical professionals all over the planet and the vast majority return to Cuba.
@Eye_c_u:
Why did Ireland not decriminalize gay sex until 1993 while Cuba did so in 1979?
If “democratic” Ireland was held to the same standards as Cuba then we would rank behind them in many many areas including health , education, homelessness, etc.
@Billy Mooney:
Wage restricted to 25 us a month. Highest tax rate of 92% and applied to workers on more than the allowed amount. Now there’s Billy’s nirvana. The 3rd poorest economy in sth America. Sure Castro was too busy fighting wars in far flung countries like Angola or Columbia to bother with the people. Billions wasted and billy thinks he’s great. Don’t forget the sixth of Cubans who blew up truck tyre tubes and paddled 90 miles across shark infested waters to escape poverty.
Ahhhh Nirvana!!!!!
Why don’t you bugger off there and live your dream. You’d have to work hard by the way.
@Eye_c_u: Most Communist nations strive for self sufficiency so the embargo really shouldn’t matter if the concept is practical.
@Paul: probably the same reason there is large Irish communities living throughout the U.S
@TheWalkingBread:
Nations moving towards socialism like Cuba don’t strive for self-sufficiency but are forced to be in many cases as the dominant imperial power on the planet the U.S will use whatever means possible to crush socialism wherever it tries to emerges including trade embargoes etc..
Destroying socialism has been the primary objective of U.S foreign policy for 70 years and they have drowned the world in blood chasing this goal:
“The disquieting reality of the world we live in is that American efforts to destroy democracy, even as it pretends to champion it, have left the world less peaceful, less just and less hopeful……………..
To place the coup in Ukraine in historical context, this is at least the 80th time the United States has organized a coup or a failed coup in a foreign country since 1953……………….
Noam Chomsky calls William Blum’s classic, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, “Far and away the best book on the topic.” If you’re looking for historical context for what you are reading or watching on TV about the coup in Ukraine, Killing Hope will provide it. The title has never been more apt as we watch the hopes of people from all regions of Ukraine being sacrificed on the same altar as those of people in Iran (1953); Guatemala(1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011). This list does not include a roughly equal number of failed coups, nor coups in Africa and elsewhere in which a U.S. role is suspected but unproven.”
http://www.alternet.org/world/americas-coup-machine-destroying-democracy-1953
@Billy Mooney: billy spouts a lot of nonsense but he is more factual than most,,,visit the island,,inform yourselves,,then comment on what you know about instead commenting nonsense ,,anyone who does visit will return,its a wonderful country with wonderful people but has a dodgy government,, now who are we Irish to complain about dodgy governments,,we have had many a dodgy government,,,
@TheWalkingBread: Government as we know it, is coercive, corrupt, wasteful, bullying, incompetent, divisive, invasive, and destructive that’s here now lets talk about Cuban government
@Shane O Malley: Is spouting a lot of nonsense and being factual not mutually exclusive?
@Billy Mooney:
Key phrase here Wally “spouting nonsense”. It’s rarely factual coming from you.
You forgot to mention that Castro nearly caused WW3. The Russians backed down when a deal was brokered with the yanks. Missiles pulled from Turkey and Cuba. In an interview with Fisk after Castro admitted he wanted to launch a preemptive strike at Washington before any talks took place. The guy was a war monger, a nut job.
And you admire him billy?
Remind us again? Who was it again who dropped 2 atomic bombs on a defenseless civilian population?
Mooney it’s obvious you’ve never been to Cuba because if you had you’d have seen the glaring inequality between those who have and have not.
I haven’t been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki but I know the U.S dropped atomic bombs on those cities and incinerated hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
So you do agree that there is a big rich poor divide in Cuba
@Billy Mooney:
Would that be the same defenceless population who sent their sons to war in the name of the emperor? The same men who killed raped tortured and decimated your communist heros, the Chinese, for 2 decades killing millions? That’s millions billy. If the war went on fighting the way the japanese were used to in the name of the emperor it would have cost millions more lives. The whole episode was a tradegy including the waste of Chinese lives. I was not refering to the 2nd world war but the 3rd that your hero wanted to start. Your typical come back, deflect deflect finger point.
Castro was a nasty piece of work and the world is a better place without him. May Kim follow shortly.
And again. Who has definitively proven themselves to pose the greatest nuclear threat to humanity?
And why would you accuse the defenseless civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of crimes they did not commit?
If the Japanese dropped atomic bombs on New York and Chicago would you be attempting to justify that atrocity now?
@Alan Cooke:
P.S. as you seem to have missed the list of wars which the U.S has started since WWII, let’s have another reminder:
Iran (1953); Guatemala(1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011). This list does not include a roughly equal number of failed coups, nor coups in Africa and elsewhere in which a U.S. role is suspected but unproven.”
@Billy Mooney: absolutely not,,,im as guilty as anyone if thats their opinion
Billy, make up your mind. You say Cuba is a paradise while admitting there’s great poverty and only because of the US.
At least Adams has the good manners to represent the Irish people.
@Keith Mitchell: the government of fg lowered the flag on all government buildings for king abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Who have despicable human rights record and are also dictators. Your point is what?
Adams does not represent the Irish people.
Adams represents 13.8% of the Irish voting public and his minority party SF, nothing more.
@Keith Mitchell: whataboutery. You mentioned despots and hamas. I mentioned Saudi Arabia and you get upset. Obviously your point is just shinner bashing and not actually the despots or tyrants, human rights. So carry on.
We the undersigned are fully in agreement that Mr Adams represents our views as the people of Ireland: Terry Adams, Kerry Adams, Mary Adams, Gomez Adams, Adam Smith, Adam and Eve, Tom and Jerry, …
@Keith Mitchell: I mentioned the Saudis and the lowering of the flag as an example that even our government show respect to tyrants and despots . It’s seems it’s the done thing these days.
You mentioned Cuba and hamas in Turkey. Are others not allowed mention other things without you accusing them of whataboutery but you can mention whst you want?
@Little One: I believe it is wrong to lower to flag for a dead Saudi I equally think it is wrong to lionise a dead tyrannical dictator. Would you agree on both points?
@Keith..but its ok with you for our elected “leaders” to meet and coerse with other leaders who have been behind some illegal wars and possible war crimes at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives!?! Thats ok with you
@Keith Mitchell: I think what people do personally as Adams is doing here is one thing but when the government of a country does something like lowering the flag for someone like Saudi Arabia on behalf of the country. Then that’s a different matter all together. Personal is one thing which everyone is entitled too but to go to the extreme of lowering flags that takes it somewhere else.
SF are the biggest party in Ireland
Charlie Flannagin goes to war criminal Shimon Peres funeral in Apartheid Israel but snubs Castro’s. Go figure!
Actually have you been to Israel? A lot of Arabs living and working there just like any other citizen. So I think you’re just a tad biased
@Charlie Wrex: ‘Apartheid Israel? lol’
I love how you’re acting as if it’s a conspiracy. Takes willful ignorant apologist to new desperate levels.
I’m laughing because the man that dismantled actual apartheid says Brian is wrong. Id take his word over Brians any day. Moral relativists make laugh.
Spent a week several years ago on the beaches in haifa and apart from being very beautiful both there and tel aviv have many many Arabs that as as integrated as can be. Really with these head da balls would travel the world a bit and see first hand.
@Eye_c_u: Nevermind the implication that you’re basing your knowledge of the political situation on a tourist resort, but how did you know they were Arabs you saw?
It’s not all a resort. Although like anywhere plenty in area. You generally know an arabic man there sane way you would know an arabic man here if you get me.
@Eye_c_u: So appearance then. In what way?
In the same way you would know Arabic man here. If you can’t tell the difference you might need to get out from that keyboard more
@Guybrush Threepwood: How many times have you been to Israel?
Hard as it is to believe not all your read about Israel on the internet is true
Almost 2 million Arabs live in Israel none are on boats try to flee to Cyprus
@John003: “How many times have you been to Israel?”
I lived in West Galilee for almost 2 years in the 80s like many Irish that were in the Defence Forces…Nahariya to be exact. That’s the reason I was fascinated with Eye_c_u’s implication that he/she was able to tell Arabs from Jewish Israelis just from appearance. While obviously by ratio more Arabs are of a darker appearance than Israelis, there isn’t that much of a difference to be able to even assume that someone was Arab. If Eye_c_u was there like he/she claims the only way you can assume that someone is Arabic is the language they speak…and you still could easily be mistaken.
@Eye_c_u: “In the same way you’d know an Arabic man here.”
You’ve said this twice now. So I ask again – What do you mean? Attire? Complexion?
By god how we need a revelution here.you can push the working people so far but eventually the s- – t fan ……history allways repeats itself….it was the British last time now it’s the west brit Tory party fine geal
What you on about?
Sending the Ambassador was the right thing to do for Ireland but I think Mr Flanagan is way out of his depth as Minister for Foreign Affairs, whatever about Trade. He has allied this country with some of the most reactionary regimes in the World.
This man held the world to ransom in the last decade. Adams definitely does not speak for me. I wonder if he will claim it as a ‘travel expense’
Joke.
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: He almost certainly will. No joke.
Well as a td you are paying him and his party receives funding from the state so yes you are paying for him to go
@Craba: And Enda runs away off to San Francisco in the government jet. Now that’s a real expense.
Katie Hopkins, that lover of all that is neo-liberal, Tory, and a hater of anything of the left, went to Cuba to see for herself what’s going on there and Castro’s funeral.
Her report in the DM (not a fan of it) this morning makes for very interesting reading. It seems Ms. Hopkins has had more than a change of heart (if she ever had one) and is now a big fan of Cuba as a socialist country, its people’s love and reverence for Castro, and for the great man himself. Best of all, she admits she expected to be writing against all that is Cuban. But now understands, and has a huge respect for Castro and what he has achieved there against all the odds.
@Dave Doyle: She says she has great admiration for the people of Cuba who love Castro (sort of like how North Koreans love Kim Jong Un and his father and grandfather before him).
From the same piece however:
“It is not all pretty. The legacy of Castro on the daily lives of his people is a ruinous mess. Buildings searching for something to hold them upright, cars limping between one repair and the next, men openly offering their bodies for foreign cash, an exchange mechanism of sorts offered just as willingly by the women too – to earn the money to get by.
People queuing endlessly with their ration books, hoping for meat or milk, filling in the spaces with bread, patiently waiting by empty shelves.
I realise there are no shopping bags here, no people laden down with stuff.
Here the women carry one loaf, one bag of meat, one lime, one piece of fruit. Pieces of a difficult and time-consuming puzzle that is meal-time for a family.
And I wonder how they feel about squirrelling away through crumbling corridors to tiny rooms they share, hanging washing on their balconies barely clinging buildings. Falling, in slow motion over decades. Disconnected from the world – no internet, no cable tv, no power.
It is a country frozen in time. As if it has been hit by a nuclear blast – then repopulated with the hardy and determined. Finding a way to make things work amongst the rubble and ruin, a weird Orwellian nightmare.”
Sounds just delightful /s
Oh well if Kate Hopkins says so…FFS
You do realise Katie Hopkins is just an industrial-scale troll, ie she doesn’t actually believe half the rubbish she comes out with, she only says or writes things to get attention. I haven’t read this DM article, but it sounds like an attempt to wind up her normal fanbase for a change.
@Keith Mitchell: I think the only thing you implied with that post is that the country has been under a trade embargo from a heavyweight nextdoor neighbour. Thank you, we’re all enlightened now!
Lol ye the great socialist utopia looking for access to the big rotten capitalist marketplace next door!
@Keith Mitchell: and suddenly the lunacy finds new fearful depths.
Billy Mooney would love that place!
@canuckandgo: Anyone that goes there loves that place. There’s a pure magic about it.
@Keith Mitchell: The opening headline of the article, just to put a bit of the context you’re so afraid of.
Katie Hopkins: ” I came to Cuba a commie hater ready to bury Castro, so why have i ended up praising him as a dictator whose people are in some ways freer than we are”
All because of the lunatic ramblings of the Renua leader – leader of a party that isn’t.
LMAO some of the comments here remind me of this
billy spouts a lot of nonsense but he is more factual than most,,,visit the island,,inform yourselves,,then comment on what you know about instead commenting nonsense ,,anyone who does visit will return,its a wonderful country with wonderful people but has a dodgy government,, now who are we Irish to complain about dodgy governments,,we have had many a dodgy government
no mention of our great leader Jarry attending,poor stuff from the reporter,as will be seen the day Jarry El President of SF becomes our ruler and follows Castro’s style ,banning freedom ,creating his secret police,bullets in the back of the head, and throwing anyone who opposes SF into jail ,roll on the day when Ireland can be like Castro’s Cuba
Is it not true to say that a dictator is an armed robber who ousts democratic power?
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