Fidel Castro, symbol of an era, dies at 90

Havana, November 26 : Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who defied the US for nearly half a century as Cuba's leader, died on Friday, ending an era for the country and Latin America. Several world leaders, including the Indian President and Prime Minister condoled Castro's demise. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died late on Friday," President Raul Castro, his younger brother, announced in a midnight broadcast. President Castro told the nation in an unexpected late night broadcast on state television that Fidel Castro had died and would be cremated later on Saturday. The Cuban government announced that Fidel Castro's ashes will be interred at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba on December 4. Cubans will be able to pay homage to Castro at the Jose Marti memorial in Havana on November 28, 29. A mass rally will be held in the capital. On December 4, at 7 a.m., his ashes will be interred at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery, the resting place of 19th century Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and numerous other leading figures in the country's history. Several days of national mourning would be observed on the island nation. Raul Castro ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Towards victory, always!" Barring the occasional newspaper column, Fidel Castro had essentially been retired from political life for some time. The revolutionary icon, one of the world's best-known and most controversial leaders, survived countless US assassination attempts and premature obituaries, but in the end proved mortal after suffering a long battle with illness. Castro ruled Cuba as a one-party state for almost half a century before handing over the powers to his brother Raul in 2008. His supporters praised him as a man who had given Cuba back to the people. But his opponents accused him of brutally suppressing opposition. In April, Castro gave a rare speech on the final day of the country's Communist Party congress. He acknowledged his advanced age but said Cuban communist concepts were still valid and the Cuban people "will be victorious". "I'll soon be 90, this is something I'd never imagined, soon I'll be like all the others, to all our turn must come," he said. As soon as Fidel's death was announced, celebrations broke out in Little Havana, the Miami neighbourhood home to many Cubans in exile in the US. Born in 1926 in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was imprisoned in 1953 after leading an unsuccessful rising against US-backed Batista's regime and was released in 1955 under an amnesty deal. Castro was elected in 1976 as President by Cuba's National Assembly. He arrived at an agreement in 1992 with US over Cuban refugees. In 2008 he stepped down as President due to health issues. Fidel Castro had held on to power longer than any other living national leader except Queen Elizabeth II. He became a towering international figure whose importance in the 20th century far exceeded what might have been expected from the head of state of a Caribbean island nation of 11 million people. An accomplished tactician on the battlefield, he and his small army of guerrillas overthrew the military leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 to widespread popular support. Within two years of taking power, he declared the revolution to be Marxist-Leninist in nature and allied the island nation firmly to the Soviet Union. Facts about Fidel Castro • Fidel Castro was the world's third longest-serving head of state, after the Queen of Britain and the King of Thailand. He was its longest-serving government leader when illness forced him to hand over power to his brother in July 2006. • Castro's holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on Sept. 29, 1960. His longest speech on record in Cuba was 7 hours and 10 minutes in 1986 at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana. • Castro claims he survived 634 attempts on his life, mainly masterminded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. They involved poison pills, a toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, a chemically tainted diving suit and powder to make his beard fall out so as to undermine his popularity. • Despite CIA plots, a US-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and four and a half decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine US presidents, from Eisenhower to Clinton, and faced increased hostility under George W. Bush, who tightened enforcement of financial sanctions and a travel ban. • Castro, once a cigar-chomping guerrilla fighter, gave up cigars in 1985. Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best thing you can do with this box of cigars is to give them to your enemy." • Castro has at least eight children. His eldest son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, the spitting image of his father and known as Fidelito, is a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist. Daughter Alina Fernandez, the result of an affair with a Havana socialite when he was underground in the 1950s, escaped from Cuba disguised as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic of Castro on her Miami radio program. Castro has five sons with his second wife Dalia Soto. Their names all begin with A. The youngest, Antonio, is the national baseball team's doctor. • One of his pet projects was a cow called Ubre Blanca (or White Udder) that produced prodigious quantities of milk and became a propaganda tool for Cuba's collectivized agriculture in the 1980s. Ubre Blanca is in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest milk yield by a cow in one day - 110 litres (29 U.S. gallons). (The Independent)