Castro's birthday party goes on as he recovers

Members of the Federation of Cuban Women chant slogans in Havana in support of ailing strongman Fidel Castro who turns 80 today. PHOTO: AFP

Castro, who turns 80 today, handed over power provisionally after undergoing intestinal surgery to his brother, Raul, 11 days ago. Neither one has been seen since.

Yet the birthday party goes on, although Fidel Castro, the country's "comandante" for 48 years, asked that the celebration be postponed while he recovers.

Cuban officials have insisted regularly over the past week that Castro is recuperating from surgery, and that life in the only Communist country in the Americas was "completely normal," as they did again Friday.

Castro himself has always answered questions of who would lead a post-Castro Cuba by saying that the revolution would go on with him or without him. Cuba is not peppered with his portraits and statues, as if to say Cuba is something more than Castro.

That, despite wishes of the Cuban exile community in Miami, which launched spontaneous street celebrations on news that Castro was ill, but which have since died out.

US officials told Cubans in Miami and in Cuba to stay put and wait to see what comes next, for fear of conflict in Cuba or of mass immigration into the United States.