”I’m always scared,” said Pedro as he deftly twisted large tobacco leaves to make fake famous name Havana cigars in a clandestine workshop.
A visit to Havana by a black president ending the US policy of isolation would be as magical as events of 50 years ago.
The revolutionary leader said history would judge him, but the daily struggle is testing even his most loyal supporters.
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/ 28 December 2008
On January 1, Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of its Communist revolution, which ushered in decades of enmity with the United States.
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/ 8 September 2008
Hurricane Ike raged over Cuba early on Monday, pummelling the island with gale force winds and rain after killing dozens in beleaguered Haiti.
A Cuban group painted a grim picture of the human rights situation in the island nation, saying in a report it was ”very unfavourable”.
Cuba has approved what is believed to be the world’s first registered lung cancer vaccine and is offering it to Cuban and foreign patients.
Cuba’s gay community celebrated unprecedented openness — and high-ranking political alliances — with a government-backed campaign against homophobia on Saturday. The meeting at a convention centre in Havana’s Vedado district may have been the largest gathering of openly gay activists to date on the communist-run island.
The only time Cuba’s Fidel Castro is known to have played golf was in 1961, in a stunt thumbing his nose at the United States. Now that Fidel has handed over power to his brother, Raul, Communist Cuba is setting aside any ideological objections and is embracing golf, the most capitalist of sports.
Johan Vega knows the Havana Golf Club well. Too well. He has played every bunker, green and fairway thousands of times and the course has become monotonous. Golfers like to tackle different courses but the club is Havana’s sole golf course and Vega (37) is Havana’s only golf instructor.
It took Fidel Castro four decades to accept limited economic reform in communist Cuba, but it has taken his brother, Raul Castro, the President since February, just weeks to launch a flurry of changes. On Tuesday, Cubans lined up outside stores to gawk at, and enjoy the new right to buy, appliances such as pressure cookers, DVDs and electric bikes.
Cubans for the first time can check into the island’s swank tourist hotels that until now had been exclusively reserved for foreigners, as President Raul Castro continues to soften a half-century of communist restrictions. Citizens here also have access for the first time to rental cars, which until midnight on Sunday had been available only to foreign customers.
Cuba has eased restrictions on the sale of computers, DVD players and other electrical goods, in the first sign of economic liberalisation since Fidel Castro retired last month. The appliances will go on sale immediately and be available to anybody who can pay, according to an internal government memo.
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/ 19 February 2008
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution. Castro (81) said he would not seek a new presidential term when the National Assembly meets on February 24.
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/ 16 January 2008
Hours after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was in ”impeccable” health, Castro told local media he was not fit for public speaking. Lula raised eyebrows and quick questions about Castro’s political future, saying after a long discussion on Tuesday: ”I think Fidel is ready to take on his political role in Cuba.”
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/ 25 December 2007
Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has gained weight, is exercising twice daily and is in full control of his mental faculties in a signal of his recovery, his brother Raul Castro said on Monday. Fidel Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to Raul Castro in July 2006 after undergoing stomach surgery.
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/ 18 December 2007
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has not been seen in public for 16 months, suggested on Monday he might give up his formal leadership posts — the first time he has spoken of his possible retirement since he fell ill. Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006.
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/ 31 October 2007
The death toll from Tropical Storm Noel’s rampage through the Caribbean rose to at least 54 on Wednesday as the devastating weather system swirled off Cuba and targeted the Bahamas. In the Dominican Republic alone, the storm killed 41 people, with another 38 reported missing, according to the National Emergencies Centre.
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/ 31 October 2007
Tropical Storm Noel weakened as it moved across Cuba on Tuesday, dumping torrential rain on already water-logged areas of the Caribbean island after killing at least 18 people in flashfloods and mudslides in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Double the average rainfall in October has already filled reservoirs in eastern Cuba to the brim and authorities are worried about flooding.
At least 28 people were killed and 73 injured in Cuba’s deadliest accident in years on Saturday after a train slammed into a bus, state television reported. ”In this fatal accident, as of 6pm [local time], 28 people have been killed and another 73 remain in hospital, 15 of whom are in serious condition,” the state news report said of the accident in the south-east of the Caribbean nation.
Forty years after the death of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, the turbulent life of Cuba’s revolutionary hero continues to inspire films and books, while his stoic image and self-sacrifice have become iconic for leftists worldwide. His legacy remains as vivid today in communist-ruled Cuba as it was, with schoolchildren still instructed to pledge each morning that: ”Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.”
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/ 22 September 2007
Fidel Castro looked alert and healthier during an hour-long interview taped and aired on Cuban television on Friday, responding to rumours of his death with a defiant ”here I am”. In the first video of the ailing 81-year-old revolutionary seen in more than three months, a pale Castro stayed seated the entire time.
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/ 21 September 2007
Cuban leader Fidel Castro may have dropped out of sight, but his trademark green military cap is everywhere. Nearly 49 years after Castro’s socialist revolution, the Fidel cap is selling like hot cakes to tourists visiting Cuba, and more and more young Cubans are also snatching them up.
Cubans expect a low-key 81st birthday bash on Monday for President Fidel Castro as he continues recovering from an operation a year ago, but a visit by friend Hugo Chávez could be on the cards. The Venezuelan president hinted as much a week ago when he said he would ”soon” visit his friend.
Three New York rescue workers injured in the September 11 attacks got the best treatment Cuba can offer in Michael Moore’s film critique of United States healthcare. The 9/11 responders spent 10 days on the 19th floor of Cuba’s flagship hospital with a view of the Caribbean sea, a sharp contrast to many Cuban hospitals.
Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro accused United States President George Bush of ordering him killed in an article published in the Granma newspaper on Monday. ”The issue of the accusation related to his plan to kill me comes from before he used fraud to steal the victory from another candidate,” the convalescing Castro (80) said of Bush.
Vilma Espin, the wife of acting Cuban president Raul Castro and one of the most powerful women in Cuba long before her husband took over office from his convalescing brother Fidel Castro, died on June 18. She was 77. State-run television said Espin died from complications from a long illness.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Wednesday he was eating enough solid food to recover from several intestinal operations that had not been successful at first. In his most detailed account of his health crisis, Castro said he spent months being fed intravenously, but has recovered his weight to a stable 80kg.
Almost half a century of communist rule has saved Havana’s eclectic architecture from the urban developer’s bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems. Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the United Nations cultural agency, Unesco, designated it a world heritage site in 1982.
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/ 7 February 2007
The old saying that necessity is the mother of invention is put to the test daily in Cuba, both because and in spite of a 45-year-old embargo that prevents Cuba from importing goods from the United States. Vintage American automobiles have become a quintessential part of life on the island.
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/ 6 February 2007
Talk in Ernest Hemingway’s former Havana watering hole often turns to the old man and the daiquiri and, at times, to the 45-year-old embargo that officially prevents Untied States fans from tippling to his memory in the Cuba he loved. ”We’re not even supposed to be here,” says New Yorker Neil Kok (47) raising his glass.
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/ 31 January 2007
State television showed Fidel Castro for the first time in three months on Tuesday and the ailing Cuban leader said he was still in the fight to recover from surgery that forced him to relinquish power last July. Castro (80) looked stronger than he had in a previous video, but still frail, in the images from a two-hour meeting on Monday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.