Fidel Castro thanks supporters

HAVANA: Fidel Castro thanked several thousand members of Cuba’s political elite for their support over the decades as they gathered to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the revolutionary triumph that reshaped this Caribbean island. “I congratulate the Cuban people for all they have done over the years, for their loyalty and revolutionary spirit,” Castro said late on Saturday in a 45-minute prepared speech after a concert at the Karl Marx theater. He told them that together they had gone on to make history. “Our objective never was the search for glory, nor honours, nor recognition,” he told them in the speech broadcast live on state television and radio. “But we were obligated, nevertheless, to write what has turned out to be an unprecedented page of history,” he said. “We were dedicated to change, we believed in the rights of nations — above all the right of independence.” Castro went on the criticise the 34-country, hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas, saying it would steal the independence of poor nations and economically annex them to the United States.

He also warned about global problems, such as the existence of nuclear weapons and the over-exploitation of the world’s natural resources.
Wearing the olive-green dress uniform with gold- and red-trimmed epaulets reserved for special occasions, Castro stood on the theatre’s stage before a carved mahogany podium and surrounded by bright green ferns. Government Cabinet ministers, top Communist Party leaders and members of the mass organisations that support Cuba’s power structure filled the theatre’s seats. Among them was Elian Gonzalez, the young boat wreck survivor at the centre of an international custody battle in 2000, and his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

As the event began, television viewers were shown black-and-white film clips of the early days of the revolution, when Castro was a triumphant 32-year-old rebel commander leading his men into the eastern city of Santiago on January 1, 1959. Just hours before, then-President Fulgencio Batista fled the island for the Dominican Republic. Castro today is the world’s longest-ruling head of government — the only socialist system in the Western Hemisphere. His leadership over this Caribbean nation of 11.2 million people remains unchallenged. Castro has ruled during the administrations of ten different American presidents, successfully defying their attempts to force him to change his socialist system. While supporters consider Castro the spiritual heir of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti, his detractors criticise him for jailing opponents and stifling dissent.