Former Cuban president Fidel Castro is celebrating his 86th birthday today. The man who led Cuba through the country’s revolution and for nearly half a century afterwards will be celebrating out of the spotlight, although there are festivities planned around the Caribbean island state.
The capital, Havana, will see an exhibition of 13 images of Castro taken by photographers like Alberto Korda, which have been artistically modified by a group of local painters. Other provinces will see festivities such as fairs and book presentations, as the Sunday edition of many of the country’s newspapers ran with ‘Happy Birthday Fidel’ headlines.
After governing Cuba for nearly half a century, Fidel handed power to his brother, Raúl, in 2006, who formally assumed the presidency in 2007. Questions over the health of the ex-president remain, as Fidel has not been seen in public for months, and in June he stopped writing ‘Reflexiones’, a series of articles he started writing on an almost daily basis six years ago.
