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It is impossible to escape a profound sense of sadness at Fidel Castro’s recent speech to the Cuban Communist Party, in which he revealed that he is approaching the end of his life. "Soon I'll be like all the others,” he said. “The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them."

Reading those words, we are reminded of his towering influence and inspiration in resisting the crushing weight of imperialism and unfettered capitalism not only in Cuba but also across the developing world over decades. From leading a revolution that succeeded against the odds in toppling the pro-Washington dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in 1959, he went on to not only make history but help shape it thereafter.

When at 33 he first came to world prominence as leader of the Cuban Revolution, rolling into Havana on a captured tank under a blazing Caribbean sun, the long beards, hair and anarchic energy and courage that he and his comrades possessed cemented their place as harbingers of a new chapter in the development of the much maligned Global South. With daring, courage, and belief they proved it was possible to break the chains of exploitation, injustice, and degradation that had scarred the lives of so many generations before them, forging instead a future of justice, human solidarity, and dignity.

In 1959 Dwight D Eisenhower was sitting in the White House and Barack Obama’s birth still lay two years ahead. Ten US presidents and thousands of failed assassination attempts later and Fidel is still standing, indomitable and committed as ever to the ideals that drove him and his comrades to emancipate the Cuban people from the economic and geopolitical clutches of ‘the empire’, a mere ninety miles to the north.

Evidence that the flame of defiance and revolution has never gone out despite his advancing years was recently provided by the rebuke he delivered to Obama in response to his address to the Cuban leadership and people during his historic state visit to the island last month. Fidel’s reply came by way of a 1500 word letter in the country’s official newspaper, the Granma, in which he reminds the Cuban people, Obama, and the world at large of the history of mendacity and imperialism not only in Washington’s relations with Cuba but also Africa, to where the current US president traces his ancestral origins. As he writes: “Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture.

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Clearly, even at the end of his life he remains under no illusions when it comes to rapprochement with Washington. How could he after his long experience of the empire and how it has trampled the rights, lives, and dignity of millions of human beings, the vast majority of them people of color, across the world? How could he retreat for a moment from his unwavering stance against imperialism and the slavery it represents and inflicts on its victims?

The magnitude of the shadow that Fidel cast over global events for half a century is testament to the fierce attachment to internationalism that underpinned his worldview.

No greater tribute to that internationalism was Cuba’s role in defeating apartheid in South Africa. Though purposely omitted from the official history of the anti apartheid struggle that predominates in the West, the truth of Fidel Castro and Cuba’s indispensable role cannot be denied. Indeed, none other than Nelson Mandela went to his grave saluting it. As Mandela said when he visited the island in 1991, just a few weeks after being released from captivity on Robben Island: "The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom, and justice unparalleled for its principled and selfless character."

The deployment of thousands of Cuban troops to Angola in the 1970s and 80s, their success in breaking the myth of white supremacism in confronting and defeating US and Western backed and armed apartheid South African troops, stands as one of the most powerful examples of international solidarity the world has witnessed.

Just as significantly, Fidel’s response to the death of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands helped to establish this young Irish freedom fighter’s rightful place in refutation of the Thatcher’s government and British establishment’s attempt to criminalize both him and his cause. “The stubbornness, intransigence, cruelty and insensitivity of the British Government before the international community concerning the problem of the Irish patriots and their hunger strike until death,” Fidel said in a speech in the wake of Bobby Sands’ death, “remind us of Torquemada and the atrocities committed by the Inquisition during the apogee of the Middle Ages…

“Let tyrants tremble before men who are capable of dying for their ideals, after 60 days on hunger strike!”

In truth, there are so many examples of Fidel’s unwavering stance in solidarity with the oppressed against their oppressors that it would take an entire book to list them all. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Che Guevera, Camilo Cienfuegos, Bobby Sands,Ben Bella – the roll call of legendary revolutionaries and freedom fighters who have come and gone in Fidel’s lifetime marks by itself a tribute to his legacy and the tempestuous period he lived through alone.

“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past,” he once memorably said. In this regard, Fidel’s legacy as a man who engaged in this struggle to the very end is assured. It will leave behind a beacon of hope for future generations that will never be extinguished.