Cuba celebrates the success of its revolution and pays tribute to Castro, reports Faiza Rady Attended by an estimated crowd of 300,000 Cubans, swelled by thousands of international visitors, a week of celebrations and festivities in Havana closed Saturday with a military parade at the José Mart� Plaza de la Revolución. The Cuban people were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the date on which Fidel Castro, and his brother Raul, along with their group of guerrilleros, first landed on the island in 1956 to launch the Cuban Revolution. Visitors who came to pay tribute to the revolution and its leader, President Fidel Castro, included President Evo Morales of Bolivia and President René Preval of Haiti, former Ecuadorean president Rodrigo Borja and Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega. Also present were South African singer Miriam Makeba and Colombian Nobel laureate in literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who couldn't attend because of the 3 December presidential elections, dedicated his victory to Fidel -- his close friend and political mentor. Leading the military parade, Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Raul Castro said that Cuba is increasing its combat capacity and modernising its equipment to guarantee the country's defence in case of a US-sponsored invasion. Threats against Cuba have become more numerous since Fidel had stomach surgery in early August, ceding executive power to his brother Raul. Still, the Cuban government's position towards its superpower neighbour remains conciliatory. Addressing the rally at the Plaza de la Revolución, Raul said that Cuba is willing to resolve its differences with the Bush administration "as long as they accept our condition of being a country that will not tolerate shadows over its independence. Any relations between Cuba and the US must be based on equality, reciprocity, non-intervention and mutual respect." The festivities were also an occasion for Cubans to honour Fidel, who turned 80 on 13 August. Still convalescing, the Cuban president was advised by his physicians not to attend the celebrations. Instead, Fidel sent a message of love and solidarity to a crowd of 5,000 people, including 1,300 foreign visitors, who gathered at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana last Wednesday. "Dearest friends," read the message, "you have honoured us immensely with this visit to our country. It is with great sorrow that I bid you farewell for not being able to personally thank you and embrace every one of you." Fidel's guests responded with a standing ovation to the man who has become an icon of freedom for Southern nations. Weary of glorification, Fidel quoted Cuba's freedom fighter and national hero José Marti, who died in 1895 fighting for his country's independence from Spain. "You are well aware of my identification with Marti's idea about honour and glory, when he said that all the glory of the world fits in a kernel of corn," said Fidel. Despite his home stature and the respect he gathers in the South and among progressive people across the world, Fidel remains a modest man who objects to any form of personality cult, says Cuban Ambassador to Cairo Angel Dalmau Fernàndez. "I was present when people suggested celebrating his birthday on a national level. He rejected the idea as 'nonsense'." Fidel's no-show at the Havana festivities inevitably led to renewed media speculations about his declining health and the prospect of his death. Fidel himself had earlier warned the Cuban people about the possibility of hearing "adverse" news, while urging them to remain optimistic. His optimism is to the point. The target of innumerable US-engineered assassination attempts, Fidel is a survivor. Speculations about the Cuban president's death are highly charged because the Bush administration expects that political chaos and upheaval will ensue, leading to the long-awaited dream of "regime change". This is wishful thinking says Vladimir Quesada, counsellor at the Cuban Embassy in Cairo. "The US government doesn't want to acknowledge that our revolution isn't at a standstill and doesn't depend on one man alone. It's an ongoing vibrant and collective process. Fidel has appointed a younger generation of politicians who actively contribute to invigorate the process," explains Quesada. "At 41, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Felipe Perez Roque is the youngest foreign minister in the world. Minister of the Economy Carlos Lage, Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, and Minister of Foreign Trade Raul de la Nuez Ramirez are all in their 40s. Though Fidel is immensely important to our country, the Cuban Revolution will outlive him." Indeed, on all fronts the Cuban Revolution is a success story. It is an indivisible part of the liberation struggle of all colonised peoples. In Havana, Mozambican writer and freedom fighter Marcelino dos Santos recalled Cuba's role in the liberation of the African continent. Under the leadership of Fidel, the Cuban Revolution was part of the rewriting of history that led to the defeat of Western imperialism and South African apartheid in Namibia and Angola. For 15 long years, Cuban soldiers fought in southern Africa against the apartheid regime, and at a time when the US still had massive investments in the South African economy. In the 1980s, US investment in South Africa totalled $3 billion; an additional $3 billion was granted in bank credits, while US annual trade figures reached $6 billion. Unlike US corporate multi-billion dollar profiteering in South Africa, Cuba's mission was a non-profit liberation struggle. "Once Cuba's internationalist mission had been concluded with honour," and Namibia had become independent," says Fidel, "we withdrew our forces. And when our forces left Africa, they took nothing with them but the remains of their comrades who had fallen in combat." Besides the struggle in southern Africa, in the Arab world a contingent of 1,500 Cuban soldiers assisted the Syrian army in the 1973 War against Israel. And in the 1960s and 1970s, Cuban doctors and technicians worked in Vietnam assisting its struggle for independence from the US. In the post-independence era of the 1990s and in the new millennium, Cuba has sent its health workers to assist victims of natural disasters all over the world. Indeed, tiny Cuba has more physicians working abroad than the entire World Health Organisation (WHO). The Cuban Revolution's achievements are, in fact, remarkable, by any standards. The embattled island has reached so-called "First World" status on many fronts. The WHO has designated Cuba's free and comprehensive healthcare system as an "example" for the world to follow. In less than 30 years, Cuba became the first country in Latin America and the South to reduce infant mortality to six per 1,000 births in the first year of life. Worldwide, Cuba is the best-rated country in terms of doctor- patient and teacher-student ratios. And according to UNESCO figures, Cuban children achieve top scores in international mathematics and science competitions -- scoring almost twice as high as their peers in the rest of Latin America. In his message to his guests, the Cuban president referred to his country's latest achievement: "The World Wildlife Foundation, a prestigious Swiss environmental NGO, recently reported that Cuba's measures to protect the environment made it the only country in the world to meet the minimum requirements for sustainable development," said Fidel. Both a visionary and realist, Fidel has helped translate his people's revolutionary dreams into reality.
