Castro Missing at Havana May Day Celebrations

[BPSCG]

HAVANA -- Hundreds of thousands of cheering workers marched through Cuba's Revolution Plaza on Tuesday but Fidel Castro was nowhere to be seen.
The place where Castro would have watched the festivities _ a raised platform under a towering statue of Cuban colonial independence hero Jose Marti _ was instead occupied by his brother Raul.

Castro had attended the annual International Workers' Day march for decades. But the 80-year-old communist leader has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to step down temporarily nine months ago and temporarily cede his duties to his 75-year-old brother.

Emphasis mine. Nine months is "temporary." I suppose after he croaks, AP will be reporting that he's temporarily dead.

"A speedy recovery and lots of health, dear Fidel," Valdes said...

Too late.

Occasional government photographs and videos of the elder Castro have assured Cubans he is still alive and recovering, appearing stronger and more robust in the most recent images.

...even though he still can't sit outside in the sun. Maybe he's turning into a Guyanese vampire...

"Will Big Brother ever die?"
"Of course not. How could he die? Next question."
-- From George Orwell's, 1984

 

[hgc]

I imagine it's a great disappointment to a lot of people that Castro seems to be going out in a slow fizz. Will there be the catharsis that allows the sclerotic policy of the U.S. towards Cuba to evolve into normal relations?

 

[BPSCG]

I imagine it's a great disappointment to a lot of people that Castro seems to be going out in a slow fizz.

That's true. It would be a lot more entertaining if TV Havana could show him talking with Hugo Chavez, and while Chavez is making some rhetorical point about how the proletarian takeover of the means of production would be the most efficient way to hasten the transition from rule by the bourgeois oppressors to the true dictatorship of the proletariat, Fidel's head would explode.

That's the trouble with living in a communist country: you can't get good special effects.

 

[Just thinking]

I suspect at times when the crowds need to be reassured he'll do an El Cid.