Raul, the eternal young revolutionary

On June 3, Army General Raul Castro will be 91 years old, with more than 60 of them devoted to the revolutionary cause since he was a university student in Havana, when he joined the Socialist Youth and, in 1953, attended the Conference for the Rights of Youth held in Vienna, Australia, in preparation of the 4th World Festival of Youth and Students scheduled for the summer of that year in Bulgaria. However, his rebellious spirit would not remain restricted to political activism while Cuba was suffering a regime of terror after Fulgencio Batista's military coup on March 10, 1952.

Raul would be very close to the path of insurgency under the leadership of his brother Fidel, who led the Generation of the Centenary of the birth of the Apostle José Martí to start the armed struggle on July 26, 1953 by attacking the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, in the cities of Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo, respectively.

Raul participated in the assault on the Palace of Justice, next to the Moncada Barracks, and was captured 72 hours later. When it seemed that he was going to be killed, he urged his comrades to sing the National Anthem in the face of death. What followed was prison—together with Fidel—until popular pressure forced the tyrant to grant an amnesty and they went into exile in Mexico, where they organized an expeditionary force that sailed to Cuba on the yacht Granma, which reached the Island on on December 2, 1956.

The struggle in the Sierra Maestra mountains witnessed Raul's legendary courage and great gifts as an organizer and military strategist since the fateful days of the ambush at Alegria de Pio and the dispersion of the rebels.

He was promoted to Commander on February 27, 1958 and established the Second Eastern Front "Frank País" in the northeastern area of the country, a force that played a key role in the Final Offensive of the Rebel Army to take the big cities of the region while the columns led by Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto Che Guevara were gaining ground in central Cuba.

During a speech at the Columbia fortress upon arriving in Havana at the head of the Caravan of Freedom on January 8, 1959, the top leader Fidel Castro pronounced his historic words, "The tyranny has been overthrown. The joy is immense. And yet, there is still much to be done. Let us not delude ourselves into believing that in the future everything will be easy; perhaps in the future everything will be more difficult..."

Commander Raul undertook the decisive task of organizing a modern and powerful army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), defined by Camilo Cienfuegos as ‘the uniformed people’.

For nearly 50 years, the Minister of the FAR made significant improvements to the defenses of the country and thus helped counter every counterrevolutionary organization and band of rebels and mercenaries organized by the imperialists, including the Bay of Pigs invasion.

As Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) since October 1965, he was responsible for many of the Revolution’s achievements and for the development of its ideological and social projects.

A transcendental moment in our history occurred on July 31, 2006, when in a Proclamation to the Cuban people the Commander-in-Chief announced that, for reasons of health—of which he never recovered—he was delegating to Vice President Raúl the presidency of the Councils of State and Ministers and the leadership of the Central Committee in his capacity as second secretary of the PCC.

The Army General was able to pick up and continue Fidel’s work successfully and make Cuba's voice heard at home and abroad as he engaged in the process to update the Cuban economic and social model as the nation kept resisting everything from the underhanded policy of President Barack Obama to the reinforcement of the U.S. blockade under the Donald Trump administration.

On April 16, 2021, during the presentation of the Central Report to the 8th Party Congress, Raul said: "Nothing forces me to make this decision, but I fervently believe in the strength and value of the example and in the understanding of my compatriots, and let no one doubt that as long as I live I will be ready, with my foot in the stirrup, to defend the Homeland, the Revolution and Socialism".

This is how this combatant about to turn 91 stated his commitment, with the same spirit and determination as in the difficult days of the Moncada, when he was ready to face death with the stanzas of the National Anthem in front of Batista’s assassins.