HAVANA — Fidel Castro would have turned 100 on Thursday, and his long shadow continues to loom over the island as he remains revered by some who miss him in the face of a crippling U.S. energy blockade and blamed by others who see him as the architect of the system that led to Cuba’s current crisis. This week, Cuba commemorated Castro with events including the International Book Fair, art exhibitions, concerts and gatherings of delegates from leftist organizations across the continent. Posters bearing his image hang in hospitals, while billboards displaying his slogans -- including his widely known “Homeland or Death” -- line the streets. His presence is so familiar that many Cubans refer to him simply as Fidel. “I believe (Fidel Castro) leaves Cuba a legacy of dignity, morality, tireless work and concern for the poor,” writer and essayist Miguel Barnet, who also is a member of the National Assembly, told The Associated Press. “And a philosophy that was translated into concrete policies in areas such as culture, education and public health.” An island in crisis Castro’s centennial comes as Cuba faces an ever-intensifying squeeze that began when the Trump administration imposed a fuel blockade in January and followed up with a series of sanctions aimed at pressuring the communist government to make political and economic changes. The measures have deepened a five-year economic crisis fueled by earlier U.S. sanctions and a failed domestic financial overhaul. For Cubans, the effects have been far-reaching: prolonged power outages, shortages of fuel and medicine, declining industrial and tourism activity, flight cancellations, transportation restrictions and reduced work and school hours. Castro governed Cuba for five decades, from 1959 until he handed over the presidency to his brother in 2008, holding massive rallies and making hourslong speeches. He remained influential until his death in 2016. “Fidel left us everything, everything good that came from Cuba’s revolutionary process,” said Argelia Mustelier, a 61-year-old retiree who lives in Old Havana. “In these difficult times we’re living through, he would have found a way to bring some happiness to his country and his people.” From guerrilla campaigns to leading a country Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father first worked recruiting labour for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own. Shortly after graduating as a lawyer, he became politically active. In 1953, Castro and more than 100 others attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro was captured and later released, then went into exile in Mexico. He returned to Cuba with fellow rebels and launched a guerrilla campaign that culminated in Batista’s ouster in 1959 and Castro’s rise to power. Castro took power and radically transformed Cuba through agrarian reform, a massive literacy campaign and the nationalization of private businesses, policies that put his government on a collision course with the U.S. Across Latin America and developing nations, Castro became a symbol of anti-colonial and revolutionary movements. His policies also fuelled deep opposition, first among wealthy Cubans, many of whom fled to the United States, and later among those who opposed the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power. “He is a controversial figure,” said historian Manuel Cuesta Morua, president of the opposition Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba. “There was no justification for sacrificing freedoms … There was no justification for preventing the rest (of the Cuban people) -- and the country’s political diversity and plurality -- from expressing themselves,” Cuesta said. “That created a rift whose consequences we are still living with today.” For many younger Cubans, Castro remains an icon, but his influence is less immediate for them than for older generations who lived under his leadership. “Our generation didn’t experience him as an active leader. What we saw was a less visible Fidel, one who rarely appeared in public,” 27-year-old Cristian Cohello said. “What remains of Fidel Castro right now, of what he left behind, is nothing; absolutely nothing.” Raul Castro makes an unusual appearance On Thursday, the former president and brother of the leader, 95-year-old Raul Castro, made an unusual public appearance -- who was reportedly last seen in June and has not been seen in public since May 1 -- during a tribute at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana. Dressed in an olive-green uniform, Raul Castro stood next to President Miguel Diaz-Canel and one row ahead of his own grandson and bodyguard, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, who has been cited as one of the island’s negotiators with the United States. Hours later, Diaz-Canel attended an exhibition of photographs -- 30 printed and another 100 projected on a screen -- of Fidel Castro taken throughout his life and with prominent figures such as Pope John Paul II and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, both now deceased. “It is a glorious day for Cuba, 100 years ago Fidel was born ... a man who embodies the ideas for which Cuba fights and the ideas for which we are fiercely defending ourselves against imperial threats,” Diaz-Canel told a group of journalists. Andrea Rodríguez, The Associated Press
