Castro Skips Cuba’s Big Day

Fidel was a no-show and brother Raul kept quiet during Cuba’s annual Revolution Day festivities, leading journalists, analysts and amateur handicappers to puzzle over the larger implications. The Guardian reports “bafflement among the 90,000-strong crowd” that turned out to hear speeches.

The Guardian:

Would Fidel Castro show up at today’s Revolution Day celebrations in central Cuba? If so, what would it mean? And if he didn’t, what would that mean?

The answer to the first question came when President Raúl Castro and other communist party leaders took their seats for the speeches in Santa Clara – but no Fidel.

Anticlimax turned to bafflement among the 90,000-strong crowd when Raul, who was expected to be the main speaker, stayed mute while lesser luminaries took the lectern, making it the first Revolution Day in living memory when neither Castro spoke.

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Library of Congress / Warren K. Leffler

Fidel Castro arrives in Washington, 1959.