After Fidel Castro

THE statement was terse but its import was great. Late on the evening of November 25th in Havana, Cuba’s president, Raúl Castro, announced that his elder brother, Fidel, “commander-in-chief of the Cuban revolution”, had died at the age of 90. Cubans woke up to the prospect of life without the man who dominated them and their country for more than half a century. In Miami, the dwindling hard core of anti-Castro exiles took to the streets of the district known as Little Havana in celebration. They had done so several times before over the past decade on rumours of his death. This time it was real.

Fidel’s death will be marked by nine days of official mourning in Cuba and by recognition around the world of his extraordinary achievement in turning his small country into a pocket superpower that defied the United States for decades. Many others will hope that Cuban communism will die with Fidel. For all its achievements in health care and education, it has impoverished the island and deprived generations of Cubans of freedoms and opportunities.

 

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