Revellers joined the soca line and partied around the pool at the Jamaica Pegasus earlier this year. - Winston Sill/ Freelance PhotographerHAVANA (AP):
Fidel Castro reached out to Cuban youth yesterday, saying, "If the young people fail, everything will fail".
It was the Cuban Government's clearest acknowledgement yet that instilling revolutionary zeal in younger generations is a struggle.
"None of you were alive when the Revolution triumphed," the 80-year-old Castro wrote in a letter to the Communist Youth Union, referencing his guerrilla uprising to topple dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. "Its roots were sustained in every act of sacrifice and heroism of an admirable people who knew how to confront all obstacles."
He went on to write: "If the young people fail, everything will fail. It is my profound conviction that the Cuban youth will fight to stop that. I believe in you."
Castro has not been seen in public for almost 11 months, since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to step down in favour of a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul.
Signed Saturday afternoon and appearing in Sunday's Communist Party youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, Castro's letter came in response to an optimistic letter the youth union sent to their 'Commander in Chief'.
"The young people of this land believe, with profound conviction, in the free and sovereign future of Cuba; in the preservation of the work of art we built and the happiness of revolutionaries now and forever," the union wrote.
Many other young Cubans aren't so convinced. Like young people everywhere, many are more interested in getting more access to the Internet, edgy music, television and movies than embodying the lofty ideals of Castro and his grey-haired contemporaries.
