Fidel Castro famously micromanaged everything in Cuba — from sugarcane production to elementary school textbooks — so it’s no surprise that before he died, he dictated precisely what would happen at his own funeral.
The instructions he left his younger brother, Cuban president Raul Castro, included the 7 a.m. burial of his ashes Sunday morning at an historic cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, on the southeastern tip of the island.
The Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, one of the oldest in the country, is the final resting place of Castro’s hero, Jose Marti, the 19th-century nationalist who is a symbol for the country’s struggle for independence against its Spanish colonial masters.
Castro’s ashes are scheduled to be buried next to the Marti mausoleum, in a tomb that the Cuban government has spent the last two years constructing in secret, according to published reports.
It is the only monument to Castro on the island. Although there are many tributes to his comrade in arms Che Guevara, there are no monuments to him.
“One of the first laws of the revolution is the prohibition of naming any street, any city, any town … or building statues to leaders who are still alive,” declared Castro after he seized power. He famously forced an Italian sculptor to destroy a statue of him.
While it’s not clear if there are plans for other monuments to Castro, the former leader’s own instructions called for nine official days of mourning. After the announcement of his death on Nov. 25, the 90-year-old’s ashes were placed in a wooden casket and paraded in a gleaming green army jeep along a 500-mile route from Havana to Santiago de Cuba.
The route, lined with thousands of mourners, traces in reverse the victorious march Castro led when his rebels made their way to Havana in January 1959.
Many heads of state and government decided to skip the funeral of a man who was known for repressing fundamental freedoms on the island.
President Obama will not attend, opting instead to send deputy national security adviser Benjamin Rhodes who took part in the negotiations that resulted in the US rapprochement with Cuba earlier this year,, and the top US diplomat on the island, Jeffrey De Laurentis.
The Russians have sent an official delegation, but president Vladimir Putin decided not to attend.
Fellow dictators landed in Cuba last week for the official commemoration of someone they considered a hero.
“Fidel was not just your leader,” said Zimbabwe’s strongman Robert Mugabe, one of Castro’s oldest pals. “He was our leader and the leader of all revolutionaries. We followed him, listened to him and tried to emulate him.”