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Fidel Castro bids farewell to Cuba's communist congress
Fidel Castro bids farewell to Cuba’s Communist party congress
(about 4 hours later)
Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has delivered a valedictory speech 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.
For half a century his existence has mocked the superpower that tried to kill, topple and isolate him. Fidel Castro seemed immortal, and there was nothing the US could do about it.
“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 fervour and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them.”
US presidents came and went, the Berlin Wall fell, Cuba tottered and Castro, ambushed by illness, relinquished power. But still he resisted the “biological solution” – a Washington euphemism for Castro’s death. He clung to life, to defiance, and surfaced every so often to assail the capitalist enemy.
Castro spoke as the government announced that his brother Raúl will retain the Cuban Communist party’s highest post alongside his hardline second-in-command.
On Tuesday the “maximum leader” emerged into the limelight again but this time there was no thunder. It was, apparently, goodbye. “I’ll be 90 years old soon,” Castro told the Communist party in a valedictory speech at the closure of its four-day congress in Havana. “Soon I’ll be like all the others.”
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 US are normalized, and popular dissatisfaction grows over the country’s economic performance.
After decades of revolutionary fervour in marathon speeches and newspaper columns it was time, in an occasionally trembling voice, for a hint of elegy.
Government news sites said Raúl Castro, 84, would remain the party’s first secretary and José Ramón 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.
“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 fervour and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them.”
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 Fidel, to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
State television, in a delayed, edited broadcast, showed the former president, wearing a plaid shirt and sports top, seated at the dais in the convention palace, consulting notes as he spoke. Party members responded with shouts of “Fidel!”
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.
Who could have guessed that the olive-uniformed rebel who overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959, who inspired and alienated generations of leftwingers, who flirted with nuclear armageddon during the 1962 missile crisis, who outlasted the Soviet Union and 10 US presidents, would make it to 2016, almost a nonagenarian, bowing to Father Time?
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.
Cuba’s Communist party, however, is not bowing to economic difficulties or ideological pressure despite restored diplomatic ties with the US.
The seventh party congress announced that Fidel’s brother Raúl, who succeeded him in 2008, will retain the party’s highest post alongside his hardline second-in-command. State media said Raúl, 84, would remain the party’s first secretary and José Ramón Machado Ventura would hold the post of second secretary for at least part of a second five-year term.
Raúl is both president and first secretary. The decision means he could hold a party position at least as powerful as the presidency even after stepping down from the government post in 2018.
Related: Prospective leaders of Cuba should retire at 70, says Raúl Castro
Related: Prospective leaders of Cuba should retire at 70, says Raúl Castro
Raúl Castro’s decision to remain in power alongside a deputy even he has criticised 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.
Machado Ventura, 85, is known as an enforcer of communist orthodoxy who has resisted cautious efforts to reform the island’s moribund, centrally planned economy. Even high-ranking government officials had speculated a young reformer would succeed him.
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.
The party congress also decided against shaking up the powerful 15-member political bureau. It appointed five new members, none of whom were high-profile advocates for reform.
Esteban Morales, an intellectual and party member who had complained about the secrecy of the congress, said he was gratified by Raúl 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.
Speaking at the congress closure, Raúl said it would be the last one headed by current leaders, signalling a generational transition in the next five years. “This seventh congress will be the last one led by the historic generation.”
A physician by training, Machado Ventura organised 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.
Machado Ventura was vice-president from Raúl Castro’s ascent in 2008 until 2013, when the post was taken by Miguel Díaz-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.
Machado Ventura was often employed by Raúl 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 Raúl 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.
Machado Ventura has been the public face of crackdown on what the government labels profiteering.
“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.”
