Prensa Latina, the Cuban state news agency, said that important figures of Cuba’s revolutionary past were in the audience, including survivors of the attack on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953 and of the journey on the Granma yacht, which brought Fidel back to Cuba on December 2, 1956, to fight against the dictatorship against Fulgencio Batista.
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When the clock struck midnight on Friday, fireworks exploded and a huge street party was organised to celebrate the occasion in the capital.
The leader of the 1959 revolution appeared later in the day for a birthday performance featuring children’s theater, live music and autobiographic videos. He touched on his father’s death shortly before his own victory in overthrowing U.S-backed strongman Fulgencio Batista in 1959. “They are people of great courage and intelligence”, Castro said in his letter, which was published on the website of the Official Body Central Committee of the Communist Party Of Cuba.
“I want to express my most profound gratitude for the shows of respect, the greetings and gifts I have received the days, which give me the strength to reciprocate through ideas”, Castro wrote in the opinion piece.
Dignitaries, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, gathered in Havana for celebratory cultural galas in Mr Castro’s honour.
The former Cuban president also took the opportunity to slam a speech US President Barack Obama made in Hiroshima during a May trip to Japan in which he failed to apologize to the Japanese people.
“I laughed with the Machiavellian plans several U.S. presidents had to eliminate me in any way”, said the Cuban leader.
In his last opinion piece, in March, the historic leader accused Obama of sweet-talking the Cuban people during his visit to the island – the first by a United States leader in 88 years – and of ignoring the accomplishments of communist rule.
(AP Photo/Desmond Boylan). A poster of Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro is seen on a wall in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016. Raul’s most broadly feted accomplishment since taking power has been implementing a detente with the United States after a half century of confrontation.
Considered more pragmatic, the younger Castro also introduced market-style reforms to the state-dominated economy and increased personal freedoms, such as the right to travel overseas.
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The need for closer economic ties with the US has grown more urgent as Venezuela, Castro’s greatest ally, tumbles into economic free-fall, cutting the flow of subsidized oil that Cuba has depended on the South American country for more than a decade.
