Raul Castro Insists Cuba’s Communism Will Not Fall

Cuban military leader Raul Castro on Wednesday night led tens of thousands of torch-bearing youths, women and laborers through the streets of the nation’s second-largest city, Santiago, proclaiming that it “was, is and will be the cradle of the revolution” that brought communism to Cuba nearly 40 years ago.

Three days after Pope John Paul II ended a five-day visit that used symbols of Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution to urge greater freedoms here, the Cuban leader’s brother reminded the nation that nothing will change the Communist system that rules it.

Using as his stage the 145th birthday of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti--and its annual torch parade--the 66-year-old Raul Castro, who is Cuba’s second-in-command, led the crowd to send a clear message that the pope’s visit has changed nothing on the island.

The choice of Santiago appeared deliberate. It was during the papal Mass there that Santiago Archbishop Pedro Meurice Estiu stunned the nation and government with an unprecedented critique on live national television of the moral and ideological errors of one-party rule. The pope reinforced that in his series of homilies that criticized Cuba’s moral decadence, especially among its youth.

“Since the last century, Santiago has defended the moral values, dignity, independence and liberty which the Cuban people have deserved,” the younger Castro said. He spoke in front of Santiago’s Moncada, the former military garrison where Fidel and Raul Castro launched their first, failed attack on the forces of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista on July 26, 1953. “No matter what people say, Santiago is still Santiago. Santiago is, was and will be the cradle of the revolution,” he said.

The ceremony, televised live nationwide, capped three days of a government drive to reclaim its revolution and reinforce its ideology. And it came just hours after the pope, speaking at his regular weekly audience in Rome, said his Cuba trip reminded him of his 1979 visit to his native Poland--a prelude to the end of Communist rule there.

In Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, where the pope drew hundreds of thousands to a Mass on Sunday calling for freedom in the name of Jesus, a large crane Wednesday finished removing a towering portrait of the Sacred Heart of Christ.