Obama won’t send official delegation to Cuba for Castro funeral

Tuesday’s rally began with black-and-white revolution-era footage of Castro and other guerrillas on a big screen and the playing of the Cuban national anthem. Some groups of government workers slept on the streets because all public transport had been commandeered to move people to Castro-related activities.

Li said Comrade Fidel was the founder of the Communist Party of Cuba and the country’s socialist cause.

“Here were these young, bearded mythical revolutionaries, sort of messiah figures, descending from the mountains to liberate the people”, said Richard Feinberg, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

“To weigh the success or failure of Cuba’s economic model without factoring in the more than 50-year-long criminal (U.S.) embargo, is pure hypocrisy”, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said in a tribute to Fidel Castro. He negotiated a diplomatic opening with the United States two years ago not, as President Obama hoped, to accelerate reforms, but to collect for the state a new stream of hard-currency revenue from US tourists and companies.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh will lead an eight-member Indian delegation, comprising representatives of different political parties including the Left, to attend the pre-funeral commemoration of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

The scene was played out on a smaller scale at countless places across the country. For some, particularly younger Cubans, Castro’s death barely registered. He struggled to keep his chin high as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Speaking at a mass memorial rally in the Plaza de la Revolucion, Zuma, in a transcript of his speech, said: “We join the progressive forces of the world in mourning and celebrating the life of this renowned internationalist and anti-imperialist, who selflessly supported the struggles of the oppressed and exploited”. For many Cubans, it was their first chance to get a glimpse of the man clad in olive green who seized power from dictator Fulgencio Batista’s corrupt government. “He delivered us from misery, from hunger”. Like Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before him, Castro parleyed the misery of his people into his own enrichment; Forbes magazine estimated his personal wealth at $900 million 10 years ago. He said studying for finals would be a better use of his time.

“In Cuba today the veterans of Angolan service are commonly referred to as the ‘generation of disenchantment, ‘ and they regard themselves much the way that Vietnam veterans did in the United States in the 1970s”, wrote the Atlantic in a 1988 article.

Earnest said that Rhodes was already planning to travel to Cuba this week, so in addition to the meetings with Cuban government officials and with officials at the U.S. Embassy that he had on his schedule, he will attend the memorial service.

Lines stretched for hours outside Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, the heart of government power.

“It’s a bad sadness”.

“Fidel isn’t dead. He’s a world symbol and his ideas spread not only in Latin America but all around the world”, said Roberto Hernandez Rosabal, a 47-year-old anthropology professor. “Everyone will be there”.

On Wednesday, Castro’s ashes, which according to Cuban state media have been kept in a room at the defence ministry, will be taken on a journey to the south-eastern city of Santiago.