PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo on Friday evening joined officials of the Cuban Embassy in Guyana and others, to pay tribute to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, on the eve of his first death anniversary.

The event was held at the Umana Yana, Kingston, Georgetown.
The Cuban and Venezuelan Ambassadors to Guyana, Julio Cesar Gonzalez Marchante and Reina Diaz, symbolically laid a wreath beneath a portrait of Fidel Castro and a minute of silence was also observed.
One of the main features was a documentary produced by the late Cuban leader’s personal cameraman.

In his remarks, Ambassador Marchante spoke of Castro’s many contributions.
“The revolution that Fidel led brought education, health, sports, culture and other fundamental rights of human beings to an entire people, besides creating deep patriotic feeling in the construction of a socialist society,” he said

He noted too, that during the Cuban leader’s 1973 trip to Guyana, it was in an address at the Umana Yana, that Castro commended the courage of Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad in defying the pressures then, to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1972.
Fidel Castro established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.  He governed Cuba for nearly five decades, before relinquishing responsibility to his younger brother, Raúl, in 2008.

During that time, Castro’s administration was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care.
Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States – most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90.