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American Morning

Castro Celebrates 75th Birthday

Aired August 13, 2001 - 10:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Cuban president Fidel Castro is celebrating his 75th birthday today. Castro took a trip to Venezuela over the weekend, and he visited President Hugo Chavez. The pair took in some activities, including a visit to Angel Falls, that is the world's tallest waterfall.

Castro's birthday comes at a time when his communist nation is undergoing changes and questions surrounding his health.

Our Havana bureau chief Lucia Newman has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When President Fidel Castro handed the Cuban flag over to the head of the Communist Youth Organization on the eve of his 75th birthday, he was doing more than fulfilling a ceremonial obligation. He was enacting, metaphorically, what he calls his most powerful dream: that Cuba's younger generations take over from him to keep his revolution alive once he's gone.

It's a notion that's become almost an obsession as mortality becomes less of a distant possibility for the world's longest ruling head of state.

President Castro's recent and unprecedented fainting spell at a public rally was a wake-up call for friends and foes alike, forcing them to reflect on a Cuba without the man who's ruled it for 42 years.

HECTOR PALACIOS, DISSIDENT (through translator): I was alarmed, because Cuba is not prepared for a quick change. A quick change could be very traumatic.

NEWMAN: Many government opponents here argue that democratic change is inevitable and that Castro himself is the best person to initiate it to avoid a power vacuum and the kind of social turmoil that occurred in the former Soviet republics.

Castro and his designated successor, younger brother Raul Castro, laugh off the suggestion that communism in Cuba is destined to collapse.

(on camera): The fact that the majority of western governments consider him as a dictator clinging on to an outdated political model is simply proof, in Castro's eyes, that everyone else is wrong.

(voice-over): Capitalism, he insists, is on its deathbed.

FIDEL CASTRO, PRESIDENT OF CUBA (through translator): It can't last much longer. The conditions are being created. Otherwise, the human species cannot survive.

NEWMAN: His voice is no longer as fiery as it once was, nor his beard as thick, but Castro continues to show impressive stamina, still speaking for four or five hours nonstop, and still getting by on only a few hours of sleep.

RICARDO ALARCON, PRES. CUBAN NATL' ASSEMBLY: Fidel is a person that is completely committed to the revolutionary struggles since he was very, very young. That may explain the energy, the vital energy that he's capable of developing.

NEWMAN: An energy that he seems determined to use to keep Cuba on its current course as long as he lives.

Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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