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Castro's fall raises new questions about
Cuba's future
HAVANA, 21 (AFP) - The tumble that Cuban
leader Fidel Castro (news - web sites) took
in front of television cameras has relaunched
speculation about the fragility of a regime
built around the 78-year-old president.
Castro, who has headed the communist government
in Havana for more than 45 years, broke
his left knee and right arm in the fall
on Wednesday night as he walked down steps
after giving a speech to a graduation ceremony.
"These are quite serious injuries
for a man of 78, but it is also a reminder
that the succession question is open,"
said a western diplomat.
"Mortality is no longer an abstract
question at this age."
For the Cuban people, who regularly hear
rumours about Castro's health, the fall
was a new sign of weakness in their leader,
who feinted while giving a speech in June
2001.
The state however gives away very little
about Castro's true health.
But his reputation is of a tireless leader
who works into the early hours of the morning
and sleeps little. He swims and does gymnastics
and loves basketball.
His friend, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the
Colombian writer, says that when Castro
"is tired of talking, he rests by talking."
But power is completely focused on Castro,
who runs the island's daily management and
diplomacy with an iron hand, ordering the
official response to hurricanes and the
daily power cuts that have badly affected
the population and economy.
"Revolutionaries do not retire,"
is a favoured phrase of the Cuban leader,
who remains a divisive figure in the world:
some consider him a champion of the Third
World and the "anti-imperialist"
struggle while others only see the world's
longest serving communist leader, struggling
on 15 years after the fall of the Berlin
Wall in Europe.
And he is determined to carry on.
After his fall, Castro "said even
if I have to get casts, I can continue my
work."
A government statement which announced
his injuries, said Castro "is fit to
continue working on basic issues in close
cooperation with the party leadership and
the state."
His determination leaves little place for
his younger brother, Raul, the official
leader-in-waiting, to increase his influence.
The 74-year-old brother runs the influential
ministry of the revolutionary armed forces,
which takes an ever greater role in the
economy after taking control this year of
the tourism industry, a key earner of foreign
currency.
While Fidel Castro is considered austere,
his brother is considered more fun-loving,
but the two were guerrillas together and
Raul was at his brother's side when the
communist government was formed in 1959.
Diplomats and other observers often raise
doubts however about Raul Castro's capacity
to maintain the president's legacy.
"He pales next to the charisma of
Fidel," said one diplomat, who doubted
the younger brother's ability to take over.
The government statement called on the
island's 11 million people to remain calm.
Another diplomat commented, however, that
Castro's fall "is just another of the
ups and downs but it is not a turning point."
Faced with hardships that have mounted
over the past 15 years, with electricity
regularly cut for several hours a day, the
Cuban people are exasperated at their worsening
conditions but also fearful of the vacuum
that would be left by the death of Cuba's
leader.
Castro's team of doctors say it will not
come soon.
His chief physician, Eugenio Selman-Housein
Abdo, said in May that Castro would live
for another 60 years.
"He is heading for 140 (years) and
I am not exaggerating because now with the
scientific progress and the development
of embryo stem cells, man will become immortal,"
said the doctor, who described Castro's
health as "formidable."
Miami, capital of Cuban exiles, abuzz
with news of Castro's fall
MIAMI, 21 (AFP) - Known as the capital
of Cuban exiles, Miami was abuzz with news
of President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s
accident, with many Cuban-Americans bemoaning
that the communist leader only fell on his
face, and not from power.
In Miami's Little Havana neighborhood,
several Cuban-Americans said they were disappointed
the man whose regime they fled years ago
had not died, and only broke an arm and
a knee.
At the Versailles restaurant, a favored
meeting spot for Cuban exiles, Castro's
fall was the topic of the day.
"I'm happy he got a good fall,"
said Guillermo Novo, laughing. "I'm
only sorry he did not get really badly hurt."
Another customer, Antonio de la Cova, said
the entire Cuban nation, watching the incident
on television must have thought, and hoped
Castro had died.
One caller to a Spanish-language radio
station expressed outrage that journalists
had spoken of Castro's "fall"
-- which he gave listeners for a few seconds
the impression Cuba's communist government
had collapsed.
"This shows just how anxious Cuban
people are to see the end of this nightmare,"
said Ninoska Perez-Castellon, a radio-journalist
who heads the Cuban Liberty Council, one
of several Miami-based anti-Castro groups.
"For 40 years, this man has been doing
what he wants," she told AFP.
Another exile leader, Jose Basulto, was
critical of the importance fellow Cubans
gave to the incident.
"Instead of the activism that should
be there to trigger the political fall of
Castro, people are wasting time with nonsense
such as this," said Basulto, who heads
the Brothers to the Rescue group.
Castro calls for calm after breaking
knee, arm in fall
HAVANA, 20 (AFP) - President Fidel Castro,
Cuba's leader for more than 45 years, broke
his left knee and his right arm in a fall,
and urged the Caribbean country's population
of 11 million to stay calm, a government
statement said.
"The medical exam confirmed what the
Commander in Chief himself anticipated,
that after his accidental fall at yesterday's
ceremony there is a fracture in his left
knee and a fissure in the upper part of
the humerus of the right arm, which will
be treated appropriately," it added.
It also underscored that Castro, 78, "is
in a good general state of health and his
spirits are excellent."
The president "is fit to continue
working on basic issues in close cooperation
with the Party Leadership and the State,"
it added.
Castro "asked to have thanked in his
name all of those who expressed their concern
and solidarity. And he appeals to them to
maintain calm," it said.
Television cameras captured the entire
incident late Wednesday when the communist
leader stumbled as he was descending a flight
of stairs and fell on his side following
a speech before graduates of an art school
in Santa Clara, a city 280 kilometers (175
miles) east of Havana.
But he quickly got up with the help of
his bodyguards and, sitting on a chair,
hastened to assure the audience he remained
in control and full of enthusiasm.
"Please excuse me for having fallen,"
Castro smiled, who was clad in his trademark
olive uniform.
"Just so no one speculates, I may
have a fracture in my knee and maybe one
in my arm," he continued. "But
I remain in one piece."
The audience, which gasped as it watched
him fall, responded with cheers and thunderous
applause.
The Cuban government, still in Cold War
mode because of hostile relations with the
neighboring United States, normally treats
the medical condition of its leader as a
state secret.
Castro joked about seeing pictures of him
on the floor in Thursday's international
media and voiced confidence he would again
make front page news all over the world.
But the president left the event before
it had concluded and was driven away in
a car.
Before his fall Wednesday, Castro had visited
the mausoleum of former comrade Ernesto
Che Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia in
1967 as he was trying to foment a revolutionary
uprising.
Flanked by Elian Gonzalez, the boy at the
center of a bitter custody dispute between
the United States and Cuba, Castro laid
a wreath on Guevara's tomb.
Castro, whose reign has spanned more than
four decades of US economic embargo, a US-abetted
invasion attempt and 10 US presidents, has
defined the Cuba of the late 20th century
by setting it brusquely apart from the decades
of US dominance that followed the United
States' 1898 victory in the Spanish-American
war.
He became a statesman and an icon of international
socialism, sending as many as 15,000 soldiers
to help Soviet-backed troops in Angola in
1975, and dispatching forces to Ethiopia
in 1977.
A driving force behind the Non-Aligned
Movement, Castro has been an always energetic
symbol to developing countries that a sovereign
nation, however small, could boldly thumb
its nose at US policy and appear to get
away with it.
The Jesuit-educated lawyer, who came to
power in 1959 at age 32, has been the perpetual
thorn in the side of the United States,
which was alarmed and embarrassed by Castro's
establishment of a Cold War communist-bloc
nation in the Americas, just 144 kilometers
(90 miles) off its southeast flank.
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