An Emotional Day for Fidel Castro

The 26th of July was a very meaningful day in Cuba.

         And Friday, July 26th, 2013 was an exceedingly emotional day for Fidel Castro. It's the 60th anniversary of the audacious attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The ill-fated operation was easily defeated by the much stronger forces of dictator Fulgencio Batista but the effort and the date resulted in the name Fidel attached to his revolution that over-threw the Batista regime five-and-one-half years later. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the attack, at least eight Presidents of Latin American and Caribbean countries visited Havana to reminisce with Fidel.

     An old warrior named Jose Mujica particularly made Moncada's 60th anniversary very emotional for Fidel. The 78-year-old Mujica has been the democratically elected President of Uruguay since 2010. As a rebel and as a politician -- not unlike current democratically elected Presidents in Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, etc. -- Mujica's inspiration was spawned by the Cuban Revolution. With Fidel Castro his idol, Mujica joined the Tupamaros movement in 1960 to try to overthrow a foreign-backed military dictatorship in Uruguay. He was captured four times, once after being shot six times. He had served 14 years in a military prison when he was released in 1985 when Uruguay got a constitutional democracy. Jose's political career then took off thanks to his insatiable support of poor people. Today President Mujica gets a salary of $12,000 a month but he has famously always given at least 90% of his income to the poorest people in Uruguay. He and his wife Lucia...she, too, was a guerrilla fighter who still worships Fidel Castro...own an austere little farm on the outskirts of Montevideo where they raise and sell flowers, an income they also give away to poor people. Their only vehicle is a 15-year-old Volkswagen Beetle. He famously proclaims: "All elected officials should be poor like me, not rich parasites."

In Havana President Jose Mujica of Uruguay this week toasted the Cuban people.

And President Mujica placed flowers at the Jose Marti Memorial.

But President Mujica made it known that his trip was primarily to visit his idol, Fidel Castro.

       President Mujica said he was "delighted to find my dearest friend in such good health after all he has endured." He said, "I found an elderly man who continues to be brilliant, always a promoter of ideas that benefit poor people." He revealed that he and Fidel discussed "wide-ranging topics, everything." President Mujica congratulated Fidel on the 60th anniversary of the Moncada attack and wished him "a happy 87th birthday." As they parted, he said, "I am the elected President of Uruguay because of you and you should know there will be others like me. Poor people needed you and they surely need people like me that you inspired."

       Lucia Topolansky, the wife of Jose Mujica and the First Lady of Uruguay, accompanied her husband on the trip to Cuba and also met her idol Fidel Castro. Lucia, like Mujica, was a guerrilla fighter inspired by the Cuban Revolution back in the 1960s and 1970s. And like Mujica, she still shuns opulence and gives almost all of her worldly possessions to poor people. "That's how we honor Fidel in Uruguay," she said proudly.

Fidel Castro turns 87-years-old in a few days, on August 13th.

Unabashedly and unapologetically he has defied more odds than perhaps any other historic figure.
The perception that he championed poor people has inspired others.
Including...Jose Mujica and Lucia Topolansky.
And Speaking of July 26th.......

      Celia Sanchez, Fidel's all-time most important ally, would be proud he is still around to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Moncada attack. It was Celia Sanchez who proclaimed way back in 1959: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." She died of cancer at age 59 on January 11, 1980. But...he still lives. And therefore, against all odds, so does her proclamation.

Celia Sanchez kept the revolution alive the two years Fidel was imprisoned after the Moncada attack.

      And beginning in December of 1956 when he joined her fight in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Fidel was smart enough to let Celia Sanchez be the prime decision-maker for the rest of the revolutionary war and then in Revolutionary Cuba. That's why renowned Cuban historian Pedro Alvarez Tabio was correct when he concluded: "If Batista had managed to kill Celia Sanchez anytime between 1953 and 1957, there would have been no viable Cuban Revolution, and no revolution for Fidel and Che to join." And Cuban photographer/author Roberto Salas was correct when he concluded: "Celia made all the decisions for Cuba, the big ones and the small ones. When she died of cancer in 1980, we all knew no one could ever replace her." 

Fidel Castro agrees with both conclusions.

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