Fidel Castro’s ashes buried amid gun salutes in Santiago de Cuba

Fidel Castro’s ashes were buried early this Sunday in the Santa Ifigenia National Monument cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba, amid gun salutes and the cries of “I am Fidel” in a private family ceremony, that prevented the Cuban population and the press from participating, after a five day national mourning.

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Raúl Castro, brother to Fidel Castro and current Cuban leader, deposited the cedar box containing the urn inside a boulder with a plaque with the name of “Fidel”. The 13-foot-tall rock is believed to have been brought from the Sierra Maestra, a mountainous region in southeast Cuba where Castro and other revolutionaries signed the “Sierra Maestra Manifesto” that exposed the revolutionary ideals they intended to instil in the Cuban people.

The ashes of the Cuban leader were taken from capital city of Havana to Santiago de Cuba, by a funeral procession that traveled for five days and over a thousand kilometers, in a symbolic journey which took an opposite direction to that of the Freedom Caravan undertaken by the Rebel Army led by Castro in 1959, after defeating the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.