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Fidel Castro gives rare speech saying he will soon die Fidel Castro gives rare speech saying he will soon die
(about 2 hours later)
HAVANA — Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro delivered a valedictory speech on Tuesday to the Communist Party he put in power a half-century ago, telling party members he would soon die and exhorting them to help his ideas survive. HAVANA — Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro delivered a valedictory speech Tuesday to the Communist Party that he put in power a half-century ago, telling party members he will soon die and exhorting them to help his ideas survive.
“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. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them.” “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. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them.”
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. 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.
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 United States are normalized, and popular dissatisfaction grows over the country’s economic performance. 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.
Government news sites 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 first secretary. The decision means he could hold a Communist Party position at least as powerful as the presidency even after stepping down from the government post in 2018. 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.
Machado Ventura, 85, is known as an enforcer of Communist orthodoxy and voice against some of the country’s biggest recent economic reforms who fought alongside Castro and his brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. 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.
Fidel Castro made his rare appearance at the Communist Party congress to rousing shouts of “Fidel!” according to state media that showed a delayed, edited broadcast of the day’s events. 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.
Government-run television showed rare images of the 89-year-old leader seated at the dais in Havana’s Convention Palace, dressed in a plaid shirt and sweat top and speaking to the crowd in a strong if occasionally trembling voice, pausing occasionally to consult a written version of his speech. 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.”
Raul Castro’s decision to remain in power alongside a deputy even he has criticized for rigidity capped a four-day meeting of the Communist Party notable for its secrecy and apparent lack of discussion about substantive new reforms to Cuba’s stagnant centrally planned economy. Even high-ranking government officials had speculated in the weeks leading up the Seventh Party Congress that Machado Ventura could be replaced by a younger face associated with free-market reforms started by Castro himself. 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.
The party congress also chose the powerful 15-member Political Bureau, mostly devoid of fresh faces associated with the party’s younger generations. Five members were new but none are high-profile advocates for reform. 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.
Esteban Morales, an intellectual and party member who had complained about the secrecy of the congress, said he was gratified by Raul Castro’s decision to submit the guidelines approved by the 1,000 delegates to an ex-post-facto public discussion and approval. He said he expected the first and second secretaries to remain in their positions only until Castro leaves the presidency in 2018, after what Morales called a necessary transition period. 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.
A physician by training, Machado Ventura organized a network of rebel field hospitals and clinics in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the 1950s, participating in combat as both a medic and a fighter under Castro in the revolution against Batista. After the revolution he became health minister and later assumed more political roles within the Communist Party. He also sat on the powerful Politburo starting in 1975. 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.
Machado Ventura was vice president from Raul Castro’s ascent in 2008 until 2013, when the post was taken by Miguel Diaz-Canel, widely seen as the country’s likely next president. Machado Ventura was named second secretary in 2011 in a move seen as a way to placate and empower party hardliners. Shortly after the congress ended Tuesday afternoon, government-run television showed rare images of 89-year-old Fidel Castro seated at the dais in Havana’s Convention Palace, dressed in a plaid shirt and sweat top and 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!”
Machado Ventura was often employed by Raul Castro and his brother Fidel 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 blames a new class of private farmers and produce merchants for a rise in prices. “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.”
Machado Ventura has been the public face of crackdown on what the government labels profiteering. 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.
“He’s demanding! He’s very demanding!” Castro said of his deputy in 2008. “To be sincere, sometimes I’ve said it personally, he doesn’t use the best techniques in being demanding.” “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.”
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Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissensteinMichael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
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AP writer Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.