Castro shunned statues, monuments but still became icon
Castro shunned statues, monuments but still became icon
Will Weissert, Associated Press
Updated 3:18 am, Monday, November 28, 2016
A stencil graffiti featuring Fidel Castro's image says in Spanish "Fidel among us," in an alleyway in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016. Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of U.S. presidents during his half century rule, died at age 90 on Friday night.
There are no statues of Fidel Castro in Cuba. No school, street, government building or city bears his name. And while his likeness stares back from billboards and official portraits, it is absent from pesos and postage stamps.
As the island's unchallenged leader for nearly a half-century before falling ill in 2006, Castro forbade monuments in his honor mere weeks after his rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day 1959. He then spent decades railing against the idolatry encouraged by other communist leaders, such as Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin or North Korea's Kim family.
"There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary," Castro said in 2003. "The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods."
Yet despite his distaste for such honors, the bearded Marxist stood as a globally recognized symbol of resistance to Washington and free-market capitalism, a hero to left-wing Latin American allies whose movements he helped inspire and an evil genius to his foes in Miami.
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