Fidel Castro, Havana, 1978. Flickr/Marcelo Montecino. Some rights reserved.
They say that heroes die young, and perhaps their heroic deeds die too when they go. In the case of the Cuban revolution, perhaps its true hero will not be Fidel, but Che Guevara, who died fighting in the Bolivian jungle before he was 40. Fidel Castro clung to the power they conquered together when in January 1959 they victoriously entered Havana from Sierra Maestra, and he failed to transform he original heroism into a representative, free and prosperous democracy.
Fidel has died as a nonagenarian, far removed from the young revolutionary icon he had dreamed of.
