Cuba returning Castro's ashes to
birthplace of the Revolution
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[November 30, 2016]
By Sarah Marsh
HAVANA (Reuters) - A procession carrying
Fidel Castro's ashes prepared to set out from Havana on Wednesday on a
long trek to a final resting place in Santiago de Cuba, where the first
shots in the Cuban Revolution were fired and where Castro claimed
victory in 1959.
Castro, who ruled Cuba for half a century until 2008 and built a
Communist state on the doorstep of the United States, died on Friday
aged 90, plunging the Caribbean nation into nine days of mourning.
He was cremated on Saturday. It will take the cortege carrying his ashes
three days to make the 550-mile (900-km) journey eastward across the
eyebrow-shaped island to Santiago de Cuba, going back along the route
taken by his bearded revolutionaries in their victory march to Havana in
1959.
The interment will take place on Sunday morning.
On Tuesday night, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Cubans, as well
as leaders of Cuba's leftist allies and other developing countries,
gathered in Havana's Revolution Square for a service commemorating "El
Comandante" (The Commander).
"He more than fulfilled his mission on this earth," Venezuelan President
Nicolas Maduro, whose government supports Cuba's ailing economy with oil
sold on favorable terms, told the massive crowd.
"Few lives have been so complete, so bright. He has left unconquered."
Castro was admired by many around the world, especially in Latin America
and Africa, for standing up to the United States, instituting free
education and health care, and sending doctors around the world on
missions of mercy.
But others vilified him as a dictator who ruined the economy with his
brand of socialism and denied Cubans basic human rights such as freedom
of speech. Some two million Cuban-Americans live in the United States,
the result of a steady stream of people quitting the country for
political and economic reasons.
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Attendees hold portraits of Cuba's late President Fidel Castro (L)
and current President Raul Castro as they pay tribute to Fidel
Castro at a massive rally at Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba,
November 29, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
With the average state salary at $25 per month, many young Cubans
look for ways to leave, seeing little future in their homeland.
A pall of silence has settled over Havana's usually buzzing streets
since the mourning period began. Officials have banned live music,
and suspended the professional baseball season and sales of alcohol.
Nationwide, Cubans have lined up to sign condolence books and
pledges to honor Castro's socialist ideology. State media continue
to play tributes on a loop.
Tens of thousands of Cubans are expected to line the route of the
caravan carrying Castro's ashes toward Santiago, where he first
launched his revolutionary movement in 1953 with an assault on the
Moncada barracks.
Later, after his bearded guerrillas deposed U.S.-backed dictator
Fulgencio Batista, they swept down from the Sierra Maestra mountains
into Santiago, before making their victory march westward towards
the capital.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Simon
Cameron-Moore)
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