“Responsible for this national disaster” or “teacher”? Fidel would turn 100 today in a Cuba in decline

The Communist Party of Cuba, the only one on the island, has dedicated the week to honoring the deceased revolutionary leader with exhibitions, concerts and conferences.

But the August 13 anniversary comes in the midst of one of the worst crises that remembers the island of 9.4 million inhabitants, subject to strong pressure from Washington and affected by serious shortages of food and water, as well as chronic blackouts.

Before placing an image of Fidel in the window of his house in Havana, Cuban Leonel Suárez kisses it.

This 54-year-old electrician, who for more than a decade has been collecting memorabilia from the revolution in a small bar in his home, calls Castro “a teacher”. And he says that if he were alive today he would face the crisis “with a lot of strategy (…) putting his hard body into his town“.

Very proud of his collection, he does not sell the photographs. However, the economic crisis has hit so hard that, when a tourist offered him $100 for an image of his communist idol, he felt he had few alternatives.

For many Cubans, current difficulties reflect the absence of the man who led Cuba for almost half a century and who died a decade ago.

“Fidel is no longer here and everyone does not have the capacity that Fidel had,” says Rogelio Valdivia, a tinkerer and refrigerator painter who has a workshop in Old Havana.

In the year of his centenary, finding an image of Fidel Castro in the streets of Cuba it is becoming more and more difficult and not only because a law passed after his death prohibited erecting monuments to him or using his name to baptize public institutions.

The large billboards with his face were disappearing little by little, victims of time and deterioration.

But in his workshop, between cracked walls and work tools, Valdivia has built a kind of sanctuary dedicated to the leader revolutionary.

“I was born in the revolution and through that I have been able to get on track,” says this 54-year-old self-proclaimed “fidelista.”

Many on the island remember Castro as the man who led Cuba through multiple crises: invasions supported by the United States, the embargo, assassination attempts and the harsh hardships resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country’s main ally and benefactor.

But many of those who supported Castro are today the hardest hit by the crisis.

One of them is Ángela Gutiérrez, 86 years old, who claims to feel “disappointed” with the direction that Cuba has taken.

“Why do they turn off the light so much? They are ending” people’s lives, he complains, after visiting several food and vegetable stalls where he could not buy anything due to the high prices.

Gutiérrez belongs to the generation that grew up under the leadership of Castro and benefited from free access to health and education. Today he considers that those achievements barely survive.

For others, Cuba’s problems do not point to its physical absence, but rather to the legacy he left.

Manuel Cuesta, a 63-year-old historian and political opponent, remembers that during his youth he saw Fidel as “the redeemer” who had turned Cuba into the country he aspired to be, but that image “deteriorated over time,” as the reality of life on the island moved away from the promises of the revolution.

Today, he believes that the deterioration of living conditions has led many Cubans to see Fidel Castro as the “original person responsible for this national disaster.”

In a Cuba where “Following Fidel is like a religion”Being an opponent was for years “an absolute condemnation of ostracism”says the dissident.

Hassan Pérez, historian, former student leader and close collaborator of Castro, recognizes that the centenary comes “in the most complex conditions that they could have imagined.” The social pact built by the revolution, he affirms, “has eroded” in recent years.

For decades, Cuba offered social protection in exchange for strict political discipline. Many Cubans now wonder if that agreement is still in force.

Still, affection for Castro persists among some Cubans, even as daily life deteriorates rapidly.

Mildred Barreto, a 66-year-old cleaning assistant, keeps calling him “our commander.”

But he admits that life in today’s Cuba is a constant struggle. “A lot of work goes into it,” he says. “Not with our commander.”