Uncertainty in Cuba as Castro Steps Down

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Fidel Castro's Five Decades in Power

Fidel Castro, Cuba's revolutionary leader who ousted a military dictatorship to install the first communist regime in the Western Hemisphere, announced that he is stepping down as president, ending his half-century rule.

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"An interesting debate will arise," Bush said. "Some will say let's promote stability. In the meantime, political prisoners will rot. . . . This should be a transition to free and fair elections. And I mean free and fair. Not these elections that the Castro brothers rig."

But the resignation brought few signs that Cubans or the more than 1 million Cuban Americans, most of them in South Florida were expecting dramatic change.

Rubén Romero, 71, a museum worker in Old Havana who said Castro's policies lifted him out of illiteracy, compared the resignation to "the death of a father." But he predicted that Raúl would be "as good or better" than his brother.

News of the resignation broke before dawn when Castro's letter was posted on Granma's Web site. The overwhelming majority of Cubans can access the Internet only at state-run offices, where access to sites such as Yahoo and Google is blocked. Other Cubans break the law by going online at the homes or offices of elite artists, doctors and scientists who are allowed to have Internet access.

Even after copies of Granma's print edition were distributed, Havana remained the quiet capital it usually is, according to interviews with people on the island. Employees reported for work, cafes were bustling and smoke-belching buses were clogged, witnesses said. There were no mass marches, no speeches demanding change and no public talk of revolt.

"The resignation of his titles does not imply that he is giving up power," Vladimir Roca, a prominent Castro critic, said in a phone interview from his Havana home. "The repression will continue in the same way."

Modern-day Cuba, perhaps more than any nation, bears the imprint of its leader. Over 49 years, the longest tenure of any living head of government, Castro monopolized the attention of his people, many of whom consider him the father of their nation.

But he has long been reviled by Cuban exiles and their descendants, many of whom lost homes and land in the revolution, and by the island's suppressed dissidents, who cast him as a heartless dictator.

After deposing the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, Castro brought free schools and health care to every Cuban, ended illiteracy and starvation, and dispatched thousands of Cuban doctors to aid poor nations. He also developed a feared secret police force, created committees to spy on every residential block, jailed political opponents and refused to change a failed economic system that has left most Cubans living in poverty.

Whether that Cuba would survive was the question looming over the island following his resignation.

Raúl Castro, who has served as interim president for the past 19 months, is believed to favor opening Cuba's economy more than his brother would like, as well as wanting to allow more private businesses. But few on the island or in the vast Cuban American exile community seemed to expect that Fidel Castro would completely relinquish control, even in ill health.

Castro himself indicated that he would continue to play an important role, writing: "This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. . . . Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful."

But there have been signs of reforms on the horizon. A video that began circulating on the Internet this month shows Cuban students complaining to National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon about limits on travel and access to the Internet. The video seemed to hint that Raúl Castro would be more tolerant of dissent.

And on Sunday, four Cuban activists were released from prison, five years after being convicted of being mercenaries -- charges that international human rights groups say were invented to silence the men. Amnesty International says there are still at least 58 political prisoners being held in Cuba.

U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who was born in Cuba, cited the imprisonment of political opponents when he called the expected handover of power from Fidel Castro to Raúl Castro the "replacement of one dictator with another."

"This is not the cause for celebration that some would believe," Martinez said in a statement Tuesday. "Raúl does not have the same relationship with the Cuban people as Fidel, and now is the time to challenge him."

A Washington Post special correspondent in Havana contributed to this report.