Cuba’s parliament has passed a law that no streets or parks will be named after late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in accordance with his final wish to prevent a personality cult.

“The law, passed on Wednesday also forbids any monuments to “El Comandante,” who died in November, and titles, decorations, or awards bearing his name,’’ parliament noted.

However, Castro’s name may not be used in any kind of advertising either.

Parliament added an exception to the ban that if an institute was found to carry out historical research into Castro, then it may be named after him.

President Raul Castro had revealed the last wish of his brother at his funeral.

“The leader of the revolution rejected any personality cult and he was consistent in this right up to the last hour of his life.”

Cubans, however, almost worshipped Fidel Castro as a cult during his lifetime.

According to the new law, his portrait will remain hanging in schools, businesses and army barracks.

Fidel Castro died on November 25 at the age of 90.

He ruled Cuba for 47 years, but not without controversy.

For some, he was a hero who liberated Cuba and helped it to develop, but for others he was a tyrant who suppressed dissent and denied Cubans basic democratic rights. </s> FORMER president Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule, has died aged 90.

Castro’s reign over the island-nation 90 miles from Florida was marked by the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling US trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died eight years after ill health forced him to formally hand power over to his younger brother Raul, who announced his death late on Friday.

With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10.29pm local time. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Toward victory, always!”

Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana’s Miramar neighbourhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died.

“Fidel? Fidel?” he said as he slapped his head with his hand in shock. “That’s not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn’t seem true.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. “We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard.”

Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, aged 32, the youngest leader in Latin America.

For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.

His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.

“Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving the island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.

He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with US President Barack Obama on December 17 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence.

Fidel Castro Ruz was born on August 13 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting workers for US sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.

Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.

Fidel turned his trial defence into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring: “History will absolve me.” </s> Fidel Castro's ashes will be buried at a ceremony on December 4 in Santiago de Cuba. (Photo: AP)

Havana: Cuba declared nine days of public mourning Saturday for its late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and said his ashes will be buried at a ceremony on December 4 in Santiago de Cuba.

From November 26 to December 4, "public activities and shows will cease, the national flag will fly at half mast on public buildings and military installations," a statement from the state executive said.

Castro's ashes will be buried in the historic southeastern city of Santiago on December 4 after a four-day procession through the country, it added.

President Raul Castro earlier said that his older brother Fidel was to be cremated early Saturday.

Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule, died at age 90 in Havana.

His demise was announced by his brother and current President Raul Castro on national television. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening," the president announced. </s> The headline over the Associated Press story read, “Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Who Defied U.S. for 50 Years, Dies at 90.” Actually, he defied it for closer to 60 years, in that his regime is still going. In any case, the headline expressed a view of Castro that many people have, all over the world: Castro as defier of the yanqui colossus and its imperialism. But that is a U.S.-centric view.

Oddly, Cubans tend to view Castro as their dictator. Or former dictator, or, now, late dictator. Their current dictator is the younger Castro brother, Raul. </s> SAN DIEGO – Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, issued a strongly worded statement today on the death of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

 “Fidel Castro was a tyrant, murderer, liar, and evil despot. History will remember him as nothing more. He murdered his own citizens, imprisoned those who disagreed with him and wrought inconceivable misery on the people of his country for nearly 6 decades,” Issa said.

 “His death does not deserve to be mourned. While the dictator has died, the repressive regime he created endures. It is my hope that his death will mark the beginning of a new era of hope, freedom, and peace for the people of Cuba.

 “We have much work to do, but the people of Cuba should know that the United States stands at the ready to help further our common mission of

 eradicating communism and oppression wherever we find it. The irony of his death on Black Friday, the most capitalist day of the year, should also serve

 as a reminder that capitalism and freedom always win.”

 Issa, whose district also includes part of Orange County, is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

 Castro died on Friday at the age of 90. He ceded power to his brother Raul a decade ago. </s> With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Toward victory, always!”

Castro’s reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul.

Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.

His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.

“Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.

He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence. Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March 2016.

Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died.

“Fidel? Fidel?” he said, slapping his head in shock. “That’s not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn’t seem true.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. “We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard.”

Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.

Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.

Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, “History will absolve me.”

Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing, he rallied support in Cuba’s eastern Sierra Maestra mountains.

Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana to celebrate Batista’s downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his rebel caravan arrived in the capital on Jan. 8, 1959.

The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro’s early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy, not install socialism.

Within months, Castro was imposing radical economic reforms. Members of the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed and in the early years, homosexuals were herded into camps for “re-education.”

In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, including Castro’s daughter Alina Fernandez Revuelta and his younger sister Juana.

Still, the revolution thrilled millions in Cuba and across Latin America who saw it as an example of how the seemingly arrogant Yankees could be defied. And many on the island were happy to see the seizure of property of the landed class, the expulsion of American gangsters and the closure of their casinos.

Castro’s speeches, lasting up to six hours, became the soundtrack of Cuban life and his 269-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 1960 set the world body’s record for length that still stood more than five decades later.

As Castro moved into the Soviet bloc, Washington began working to oust him, cutting U.S. purchases of sugar, the island’s economic mainstay. Castro, in turn, confiscated $1 billion in U.S. assets.

The American government imposed a trade embargo, banning virtually all U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine, and it severed diplomatic ties on Jan. 3, 1961.

On April 16 of that year, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist, and the next day, about 1,400 Cuban exiles stormed the beach at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s south coast. But the CIA-backed invasion failed.

The debacle forced the U.S. to give up on the idea of invading Cuba, but that didn’t stop Washington and Castro’s exiled enemies from trying to do him in. By Cuban count, he was the target of more than 630 assassination plots by militant Cuban exiles or the U.S. government.

The biggest crisis of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow exploded on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and imposed a naval blockade of the island. Humankind held its breath, and after a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them. Never had the world felt so close to nuclear war.

Castro cobbled revolutionary groups together into the new Cuban Communist Party, with him as first secretary. Labor unions lost the right to strike. The Catholic Church and other religious institutions were harassed. Neighborhood “revolutionary defense committees” kept an eye on everyone.

Castro exported revolution to Latin American countries in the 1960s, and dispatched Cuban troops to Africa to fight Western-backed regimes in the 1970s. Over the decades, he sent Cuban doctors abroad to tend to the poor, and gave sanctuary to fugitive Black Panther leaders from the U.S.

But the collapse of the Soviet bloc ended billions in preferential trade and subsidies for Cuba, sending its economy into a tailspin. Castro briefly experimented with an opening to foreign capitalists and limited private enterprise.

As the end of the Cold War eased global tensions, many Latin American and European countries re-established relations with Cuba. In January 1998, Pope John Paul II visited a nation that had been officially atheist until the early 1990s.

Aided by a tourism boom, the economy slowly recovered and Castro steadily reasserted government control, stifling much of the limited free enterprise tolerated during harder times.

As flamboyant as he was in public, Castro tried to lead a discreet private life. He and his first wife, Mirta Diaz Balart, had one son before divorcing in 1956. Then, for more than four decades, Castro had a relationship with Dalia Soto del Valle. They had five sons together and were said to have married quietly in 1980.

By the time Castro resigned 49 years after his triumphant arrival in Havana, he was the world’s longest ruling head of government, aside from monarchs.

In retirement, Castro voiced unwavering support as Raul slowly but deliberately enacted sweeping changes to the Marxist system he had built.

His longevity allowed the younger brother to consolidate control, perhaps lengthening the revolution well past both men’s lives. In February 2013, Raul announced that he would retire as president in 2018 and named newly minted Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel as his successor.

“I’ll be 90 years old soon,” Castro said at an April 2016 Communist Party congress where he made his most extensive public appearance in years. “Soon I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof that on this planet, if one works with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need and that need to be fought for without ever giving up.”

Cuba’s government announced that Castro’s ashes would be interred on Dec. 4 in the eastern city of Santiago that was a birthplace of his revolution. That will follow more than a week of honors, including a nearly nationwide caravan retracing, in reverse, his tour from Santiago to Havana with the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein reported this story in Havana and Peter Orsi reported from Mexico City. AP writer Anita Snow in Mexico City and AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report. </s> Castro always said he did not want a cult of personality, although critics point out that the cult was everywhere. His words are posted on billboards nationwide and his name is invoked at every public event.

"His fighting spirit will remain in the conscience of all Cuban revolutionaries, today, tomorrow and always," President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, told the Assembly, according to excerpts of his speech published by official media.

The best way to pay homage to "El Comandante"—the commander—is to follow his concept of revolution, the president said.

The new law does not ban artists from using Fidel Castro's figure in music, literature, dance, cinema or other visual arts, official media specified. Photos of him hanging in offices, places of study or public institutions also may be kept.

Every since his death, a large photo of a young Castro dressed in military fatigues, with a rifle and pack slung over his back, has hung from a building in Havana's Revolution Square.

Castro, a leading Cold War figure who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and defied U.S. attempts to topple him, died on Nov. 25 at the age of 90, eight years after handing the presidency over to Raul.

Cuba commemorated his death with nine official days of mourning and two mass memorial services.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans also turned out to greet a funeral cortege carrying Castro's ashes 600 miles east to Santiago, retracing the route that his rebels took when they overthrew the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista in 1959. </s> Santiago, Cuba (CNN) Fidel Castro's remains were laid to rest Sunday morning in a private ceremony in Santiago de Cuba, the city where he launched his communist revolution, Cuban officials told CNN.

Castro's ashes were interred in the city's Santa Ifigenia Cemetery where Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary leader from the 19th century, is buried.

Earlier in the day, people lined the streets to see Castro's remains carried to the cemetery in a box placed on a simple trailer and towed by a military Jeep.

The press was not allowed to attend the burial but a mix of world leaders, royalty, Marxist guerrillas and Hollywood actors were invited.

French Environment Minister Segolene Royal told the BBC there were no speeches at the gravesite. "It was very simple," he said.

Cuban officials said they wanted to protect the privacy of Castro's family. Many Cubans didn't know Castro had a family because he kept them out of the public spotlight.

Castro died November 25 at age 90. The burial ends nine days of mourning for the charismatic but polarizing revolutionary who led Cuba for more than half a century.

Castro's ashes arrived Saturday in Santiago de Cuba after a four-day tour across the island nation. Santiago is located on the eastern end of Cuba, about 880 kilometers (546 miles) from Havana.

The private funeral service stood in contrast to the public mourning for Castro.

Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over when his older brother fell ill in 2006, spoke at the event and praised Fidel Castro's accomplishments, especially his willingness to stand up to the United States.

Presidents from Latin American nations and Africa paid their respects. No representative from the United States attended the memorial or the funeral, despite a thawing in relations with Cuba under President Obama.

Raul Castro said his brother insisted that no public spaces or monuments be named after him, saying he wanted to avoid "a cult of personality."

In 1953, a young Fidel Castro led a group of about 150 rebels who attacked the Moncada military barracks in Santiago in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro later launched another revolt and declared victory January 1, 1959, from the balcony of the Santiago City Hall. He then made his way across the country to Havana. </s> "Fidel Castro is dead!" Trump tweeted on the news of the 90-year-old's death.

The longtime revolutionary leader died Friday, presenting more potential opportunities for change in a country whose relations with the United States recently began to improve

Castro's death came just weeks after Trump, a frequent critic of the deal that lead to a reopening of diplomatic relations with Cuba, was elected president.

Trump had threatened to undo efforts by President Barack Obama to bring the US and Cuba closer together calling the recent agreement "weak."
Fidel Castro, founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, former Prime Minister and former President of Cuba, dies at the age of 90.