Cuba on Saturday marked Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday with large banners of the revered former leader hanging in the streets of the capital and new photography exhibition dedicated to his life.
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“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”, Mr Castro wrote in the opinion piece.
Castro went on to reminisce about his youth on the family plantation in the eastern village of Biran, in particular about his father who died before the revolution.
But the retired Cuban leader did make his presence felt on the occasion, publishing a column in state newspaper Granma that reflected glancingly upon his early childhood before turning to President Barack Obama’s May visit to Japan.
He criticised Mr Obama for not apologising to the people of Hiroshima for the nuclear bomb dropped there by the U.S. in World War Two.
A veteran-cigar maker has celebrated Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday by rolling what is believed to be the world’s longest cigar.
“I believe that the speech lacked apologetic words for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima, although he knew about the effects of the bomb”.
(In his speech, Obama did decry the resort to war and called for a world without nuclear weapons.) Castro condemned as “equally criminal” the bombing of Nagasaki three days later on August 9, 1945.
But his presence wasn’t welcomed by Castro, who stepped down as Cuba’s president 10 years ago after suffering a severe gastrointestinal illness.
Cuba has been celebrating Castro’s 90th birthday for the past several months with a series of events and tributes that will culminate on Saturday with a ceremony at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana.
Castro answered to the honor by penning an Op-Ed which began by thanking the Cuban people who took part in the festivities. However, Castro defiantly wrote after Obama’s visit to Havana in March: “We don’t need anything from the empire”.
The need for closer economic ties with the U.S. has grown more urgent as Venezuela, Castro’s greatest ally, tumbles into economic free-fall, cutting the flow of subsidised oil that Cuba has depended on for more than a decade.
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Under Castro’s brother, Raul Castro, the US and Cuba have begun to thaw relations, including a visit by Obama to Cuba in March. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Cubans are migrating to the United States, hollowing out the ranks of highly educated professionals.
