Story highlights
- Cubans prepare to honor the life of Fidel Castro at official events
- Longtime leader's ashes will be interred next Sunday in cemetery in Santiago de Cuba
(CNN)Cubans will celebrate Fidel Castro's life at mass gatherings this week as the Caribbean country highlights the path Castro took during the revolution he embodied six decades ago.
The funeral for the longtime leader will be next Sunday, December 4, at Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city and site of the putative beginning of the Cuban Revolution in 1953.
The path of celebration
On Monday two simultaneous 21-gun salutes will fire in Havana and Santiago de Cuba to pay tribute to Castro, who ruled Cuba for nearly five decades, according to Cuba's state news agency.
In Cuba, days of mourning for Fidel Castro 01:54
On Tuesday evening in Havana, at least tens of thousands are expected to pay tribute to Castro in the large plaza named for national hero Jose Marti, a poet and leader of Cuba's 19th century fight for independence from Spain.
Read more
- Can Cuba move on?
- Castro, Mao: Communists that never saw eye to eye
- He survived 600 assassination attempts
- Trump marks passing of 'brutal dictator'
- Opinion: Socialism should die with Castro
- Mourning in Castro's hometown
- Crowds flood Little Havana in Miami
- His life in photos
- Castro's death brings joy and grief
- What now for US-Cuba relations?
- CNN Español's full coverage
On Wednesday Castro's ashes will begin a ceremonial journey east across the country, the reverse of the route Castro and his band of rebels took to seize power from dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
His ashes are expected to arrive in Santiago de Cuba Saturday for a 7 p.m. rally at the Antonio Maceo Revolution Square.
On Tuesday through Saturday there will be cannon firings every hour on the hour from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
And on Sunday, Castro's ashes will be interred in the same cemetery where Marti is buried after a 7 a.m. service. At 9 a.m. that day, another 21-gun salute will fire simultaneously in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.
Sadness and joy
Castro died Friday at 90. His brother, Raul Castro, announced his death in a televised statement Saturday.
"I say to the people of Cuba, with profound pain I come here to inform our people, our friends of America and the world, that today, 25 November, 2016, at 10:29 pm, died the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz," Raul Castro said.
A concert by famed tenor Placido Domingo was canceled and clubs usually alive with music went silent as public performances were stopped.
Cuban radio and television will broadcast patriotic and historical programming during the nine days of mourning that began Saturday, state news outlet Granma reported.
"The Cuban people are feeling sad because of the loss of our commander in chief Fidel Castro Ruz, and we wish him, wherever he is, that he is blessed, and us Cubans love him," a young Cuban woman told CNN.
At the University of Havana, where Castro attended law school 70 years ago, people placed flowers and photos by a statue on the campus' main steps.
In Bíran, a town near Cuba's eastern tip where Castro was born, people flocked to the home of his half-brother, Martin Castro. They wanted to know whether the hometown revolutionary was dead.
"They have been knocking and calling and asking if it is true," said Angel Daniel Castro, a nephew of Fidel Castro's.
"For us, he was like a father. And Cuba sees him as a father. One woman just called crying and saying she had lost her father. Everyone feels it."
Cuban-American: I was blacklisted in Cuba 03:40
In Florida, however, the mood was decidedly more festive. Revelers spilled into the streets of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood early Saturday. They popped champagne, clanged pots, cheered and waved the Cuban flag with signs reading, "Satan, Fidel is now yours."
"It means a lot for us Cubans," a reveler told CNN affiliate WSVN. "It's a moment that we've been waiting for 55 years....The man that caused so much suffering ... has passed away."
Johandys Comas, a 41-year-old Cuban in Miami who left his home country in 2004, described the mood as sober in his Cuban hometown of Cienfuegos.
"It's a party here, but back home my dad says it's quiet and everyone's mostly staying inside," Comas said. "You can't speak out in Cuba."
Castro's long reign
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during a March 1985 interview at his presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. Castro died at age 90 on November 25, 2016, Cuban state media reported. Click through to see more photos from the life of the controversial Cuban leader who ruled for nearly half a century:
Hide Caption
1 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
A portrait of Castro in New York in 1955. He was in exile after being released as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners in Cuba. Two years earlier, he and about 150 others staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista.
Hide Caption
2 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara, Castro and Castro's brother Raul organized a group of Cuban exiles that returned to Cuba in December 1956 and waged a guerrilla war against government troops.
Hide Caption
3 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro and his revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January 1959 after overthrowing Batista.
Hide Caption
4 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Crowds cheer Castro on his victorious march into Havana in 1959.
Hide Caption
5 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech.
Hide Caption
6 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February 1959. His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces.
Hide Caption
7 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
During a visit to New York in 1959, Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children.
Hide Caption
8 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in 1959.
Hide Caption
9 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro shakes hands with US Vice President Richard Nixon during a reception in Washington in 1959.
Hide Caption
10 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro addresses the UN General Assembly in September 1960.
Hide Caption
11 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro jumps from a tank in April 1961 as he arrives at Giron, Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. That month, a group of about 1,300 Cuban exiles, armed with US weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro.
Hide Caption
12 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of the Cuban blockade by President John F Kennedy in October 1962.
Hide Caption
13 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro raises arms with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May 1963.
Hide Caption
14 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro in July 1964.
Hide Caption
15 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro plays baseball in 1964.
Hide Caption
16 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro addresses thousands of Cubans in Havana in 1968.
Hide Caption
17 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
In 1977, Castro uses a map as he describes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to ABC correspondent Barbara Walters.
Hide Caption
18 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Iraq's Saddam Hussein, center, with the Castro brothers during a visit to Cuba in January 1979.
Hide Caption
19 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro greets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Havana in April 1989.
Hide Caption
20 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro visits Paris in March 1995.
Hide Caption
21 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro meets with Pope John Paul II on an airport tarmac in Havana in January 1998. It was the first papal visit to Cuba.
Hide Caption
22 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro puts his arm around South African President Nelson Mandela in May 1998 with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, left, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. They were in Geneva, Switzerland, for a conference of the World Trade Organization.
Hide Caption
23 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Cuba in December 2000. Putin was the first Russian President to visit Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Hide Caption
24 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint while giving a speech in Cotorro, Cuba, in June 2001. He returned to the podium less than 10 minutes later to assure the audience he was fine and that he just needed to get some sleep.
Hide Caption
25 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
In July 2001, Castro talks with Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who was the focus of a bitter international custody dispute a couple of years earlier.
Hide Caption
26 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro and former US President Jimmy Carter listen to the US national anthem after Carter arrived in Havana for a visit in May 2002.
Hide Caption
27 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro at the May Day commemoration of Revolution Square in Havana in 2004. He held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union's end and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was an idea whose time had passed.
Hide Caption
28 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a session of the Cuban parliament in July 2004.
Hide Caption
29 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro speaks in Havana in February 2006.
Hide Caption
30 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro in Havana in September 2002. Several surgeries forced him to relinquish his duties temporarily to younger brother Raul in July 2006.
Hide Caption
31 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
In footage from state-owned Cuban television, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits an ailing Castro in September 2006. That July, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery. Castro resigned as President in February 2008, and his brother Raul took over permanently.
Hide Caption
32 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September 2010. He had remained mostly out of sight after falling ill in 2006 but returned to the public light that year.
Hide Caption
33 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Pope Benedict XVI meets with Castro in Havana in March 2012.
Hide Caption
34 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
In this picture provided by CubaDebate, Castro talks to Randy Perdomo, president of Cuba's University Students Federation, during a February meeting in Havana.
Hide Caption
35 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Castro visits with 19 cheese masters on Friday, July 3, 2015, in a rare trip outside his Havana home.
Hide Caption
36 of 37
Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
Leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, left, visits with Fidel Castro during a meeting at Castro's home on February 14, 2016.
Hide Caption
37 of 37
Castro reigned with an iron hand for nearly five decades, defying a US economic embargo intended to dislodge him. He remained committed to keeping Cuba a one-party, communist state after the fall of the Soviet Union, his chief sponsor during the years of mutual antagonism with the United States.
At the height of the Cold War, Castro used a blend of charisma and repression to install the first and only communist government in the Western Hemisphere, less than 100 miles from the United States.
Repressive laws allow the government to jail and punish its critics, such as dissidents and journalists, with long prison sentences, according to Human Rights Watch.
"There are few individuals in the 20th century who had a more profound impact on a single country than Fidel Castro had in Cuba," Robert Pastor, a former national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, told CNN in 2012.
"He reshaped Cuba in his image, for both bad and good," said Pastor, who died in 2014.
Although Castro's stage was a small island nation, historians say he commanded worldwide attention.
"He was a historic figure way out of proportion to the national base in which he operated," said Louis A. Perez Jr., author of 10 books on the Caribbean island and its history.
Obama, Trump react to Fidel Castro's death 08:06
Castro, known universally as "Fidel," held on to power for 47 years until illness forced him to relinquish his duties to younger brother Raul in July 2006. Castro resigned as president in February 2008, and Raul took over permanently.
But Fidel Castro lived long enough to see a historic thaw between Cuba and the United States. The two nations reestablished diplomatic relations in July, and President Barack Obama visited the island this year.
Obama extended "a hand of friendship to the Cuban people" as he offered his condolences to the Castro family.
"We know that this moment fills Cubans -- in Cuba and in the United States -- with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation," he said.
"History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."
Other world leaders react
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Members of the Cuban community in the Little Havana area in Miami react to the death of Fidel Castro on Saturday, November 26. Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of US presidents during his half-century rule, died at age 90.
Hide Caption
1 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Rafaela Vargas mourns the death of former President Fidel Castro at the entrance of her home in the Vedado neighborhood in Havana, Cuba, on Saturday, November 26.
Hide Caption
2 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Cuban students chant slogans and carry a wreath as they mourn the death of revolution leader Fidel Castro, at the University of Havana, on November 26, 2016, in Havana.
Hide Caption
3 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
A member of the Cuban community in the Little Havana area in Miami reacts to the death of Fidel Castro.
Hide Caption
4 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
People gather outside the Cuban Embassy in Santiago, Chile. One of the world's longest-serving rulers and most singular characters, Castro defied 11 US administrations and hundreds of assassination attempts.
Hide Caption
5 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
People take to the streets to react to the news of the death of former Cuban President Fidel Castro outside the restaurant Versailles in Miami.
Hide Caption
6 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Women cry outside Cuba's embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after the announcement of the death of Fidel Castro.
Hide Caption
7 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Cuban-Americans react to the death of Fidel Castro in the Little Havana area in Miami.
Hide Caption
8 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Flowers, candles and a Cuban cigar are laid out in Moscow in memory of former Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Hide Caption
9 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Cuban-Americans take to the streets of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood early Saturday, November 26, upon hearing the news of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro's death. Castro died at age 90 after ruling the island nation with an iron hand for nearly half a century.
Hide Caption
10 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Cuban-Americans celebrate in Miami's Little Havana, the center of the Cuban exile community in the United States.
Hide Caption
11 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Celebrations continue into the early morning November 26 in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Few who came to the United States in the late '50s and early '60s believed Castro would hang on to power for so long, only ceding the presidency to his brother Raul in recent years.
Hide Caption
12 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Members of Communist Party of India march as part of a remembrance rally in Chennai on November 26, 2016.
Hide Caption
13 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
People celebrate the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Miami, on Saturday, November 26, 2016. Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule of Cuba, has died at age 90.
Hide Caption
14 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
The mood seems somber in Havana on November 26 as Cubans react to the announcement of the revolutionary leader's death.
Hide Caption
15 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
A man places flowers at the Cuban Embassy in Moscow in memory of Castro on November 26. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Cuban leader "a sincere and reliable friend of Russia."
Hide Caption
16 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
Those out on the streets of Miami include Cuban-Americans of all ages. Some Cuban exiles have waited years to mark this moment.
Hide Caption
17 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
The streets are quiet in the Cuban capital on November 26 following the announcement of Castro's death the evening before on national TV.
Hide Caption
18 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
People gather at an office of the Popular Assembly in Havana in front of a picture of the iconic leader on November 26 after President Raul Castro announced his brother's death on television.
Hide Caption
19 of 20
Photos: Reaction to Fidel Castro's death
A sign that reads, "Long live Fidel," stands on a government building in Havana early November 26.
Hide Caption
20 of 20
Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed Castro as a "great leader" for the Cuban people and said China had lost "an intimate and sincere friend," according to a statement read on Chinese state TV.
"He achieved immortal historical achievements for the development of world socialism. He was the great person of our era, and people and history will remember him," Xi said. "Great Castro will live forever. "
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto called Castro a friend of Mexico who had promoted bilateral relationships based on "respect, dialogue and solidarity."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Castro as "a larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation."
Other leaders noted Castro's global impact but declined to praise a man who was criticized for his record on human rights.
French President François Hollande said Castro "embodied the Cuban revolution, with the hopes it aroused and then in the disillusion it provoked."
