File Castro 2 - Castro resigns as president after nearly a half-century
NAME: FILE CASTRO 2 20080219I
TAPE: EF08/0198
IN_TIME: 10:18:00:14
DURATION: 00:09:41:16
SOURCES: CUBAVISION /Various
DATELINE: Various - See Script
RESTRICTIONS: See Script
SHOTLIST
ALL CUBAVISION MATERIAL IS NO ACCESS CUBA
ALL AP STILLS - "No Access Canada/For Broadcast use only - Strictly No Access Online or Mobile"
CUBAVISION
1.Still photo of Fidel Castro during his infant years
2.Still photo of Fidel Castro as a youth
3.Two still photos of Fidel Castro during teenage years
CUBAVISION - Isla de la Joventud - 1955
4..Amnesty for Fidel Castro - Fidel Castro walking out of the Presidio jail, Fidel, and face of Juan Almeida, Vice President of the Council of
State and Comandante de la Revolucion, walking closest past the camera
5.Fidel and his younger brother Raul Castro, being embraced by supporters
CUBA VISION - DATE UNKNOWN
6.Still photo of Fidel Castro organising revolution attempt in Moncada
Moncada, 1953 - CUBAVISION
7. Storming of the Moncada barracks which led to the imprisonment Fidel and Raul Castro;
Then leader, Batista soldiers entering barracks, bodies of rebels killed who tried to take over what was then Cuba's second fort
Sierra Maestra mountains, Santiago de Cuba - 1959 - CUBAVISION
8.Fidel Castro in the mountains
9.Re-enacted footage of the arrival of Fidel and Raul Castro off the coast of Cuba, prior to the Revolution
10. Fidel broadcasting for Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio), the mouthpiece of the revolutionary force
11. Raul Castro (in hat) active in the Sierra Maestra mountains with Vilma Espina, President of the Federation of Cuban Women
12. Various of Fidel Castro in the mountains with fellow fighters, then talking to Che Guevara, more fighters, standing alone
Havana -1959 - CUBAVISION
13. Various of americans and Cubans leave Havana in commercial planes
CUBAVISION - Havana -1959
14. Castro takes Havana - Fidel Castro entering Havana along the Malecon sea front avenue, Fidel on top of tank entering Havana waving crowd
15.Fidel on top of tank entering Havana
16.Fidel greeting female supporter of the Revolution
17.Fidel cheering along with supporters
18.Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Che Guevara and Dr Oswaldo Dorticos, appointed President 1961 by Cuba's then Prime Minister Fidel Castro
CUBAVISION - Various - 1960's
19.Literacy - Various of Cubans carrying out the Revolution's literacy programme, Fidel Castro giving diploma to literacy programme recipient
20.Fidel pausing after cutting sugar cane to take a drink in the cane fields
21.Che Guevara and Fidel Castro talking
CUBAVISION - Havana - 1960's
21.Various of La Cobre explosion in the docks of Havana port, alleged anti revolutionary act of sabotage
22.Funeral of victims of La Cobre march, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Dr Oswaldo Dorticos at Funeral march
Bay of Pigs footage - 1961 - CUBAVISION
23.Various of of military manoeuvres
24.Fidel Castro directing offensive
25.Various of of military manoeuvres
26.Various of victims of combat
27.More of military manoeuvres
28.Various of US aircraft shot down
29.Body of US pilot
30. Ship on fire during fighting
31.Various of invasion militia surrendering
32 Castro walking, smoking cigar during Bay of Pigs crisis
33.Newspaper headline "The Invasion smashed"
CUBAVISION - New York -1960
34.Fidel Castro arrives in New York
35.Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Krushchev
36.Various of Castro's visit to New York, his first to the U-S
37.Fidel Castro shaking hands with Vice President Richard Nixon in New York
Havana -1962 - CUBAVISION
Cuban Missile Crisis
38.U-S ships off the coast of Cuba, imposing the blockade
39.Various of defence installations and troops along Havana's Malecon (seafront avenue)
U-N POOL - New York - 22 October 1995
40 Castro in New York for U-N's 50th birthday, Castro greeting with
Russian President Boris Yeltsin
41. US President Clinton entering room and saluting
42. Pan from Castro to Clinton during lunch at separate tables
AP Television - AP Clients only
Havana - 1 May 1996
45. May Day parade
AP Television
Santa Clara - 17 October 1997
46. Wide shot of Che Guevara's statue
AP Television
Havana - 17 October 1997
47. Mid shot of march through Revolution Square
AP Television
Santa Clara - 17 October 1997
48. Close up Che Guevara's coffin
49. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban President:
"Always until victory."
VATICAN TV
Vatican City, Rome 1996
50.. Various of Castro during visit to meet the Pope
AP Television
Havana - 24 January 1998
63. Medium shot of Pope John Paul II with Castro
AP Television
Havana -3 February 1998
64. Medium shot of people inside house watching Fidel Castro speech on television
65. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban president
"I want to have the pleasure of thanking the Cuban people for the success of the papal visit."
66. Medium shot of Pope John Paull II and Castro
POOL
Miami, Florida - March 29, 2000
67. Elian Gonzales, shipwrecked Cuban boy, being carried on someone's shoulders outside Miami relatives' home, drapes himself with U-S flag
AP STILL - No Access Canada/Internet
Miami, Florida - April 22, 2000
68. Still of Elian being seized by federal agents from his Miami home
ABC - No Access NAmerica/Internet
Miami, Florida - 22 April 2000
69. I-N-S Federal officers seizing Elian and bundling him into car
CUBAVISION - Havana - 28 June 2000
70. Various of Elian's return to Havana
CUBAVISION - Havana - 13 December 2000 APTN
71. Russian president Putin greeted by Castro
IRIB - No Access Iran
Tehran - 8 May 2001
72. Cuban President Fidel Castro shakes hands with Iranian President Khatami
Libyan TV - No Access Libya
Tripoli - 16 May 2001
73. Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi saluting
CUBAVISION - Havana - 12-17 May 2002
74. Wide shot of Former US President Jimmy Carter and Castro at airport ceremony
75. Close up Carter smiling at ceremony at Havana University
76. Mid shot Castro clapping
77.Carter signing document
78. Castro and Carter shake hands
79. Wide of Castro and Carter before Carter's departure
80. SOUNDBITE : (Spanish with English translation) Fidel Castro, Cuban Leader
"All my life I believed in change. I promised, because we are always changing, but changing towards the future. We are looking ahead not backwards, all those have gone backwards in corruption and other things. We want to go forwards not backwards."
CUBAVISION - 19 January 2003
81.Mid shot of Fidel Castro casting his vote for the National Assembly elections
82.Cutaway pf Castro speaking to reporters
83.SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban President:
"Do you know where is the factory of dissidents in Cuba? In the US interests section. I can provide you 10-thousand pages of all data we have collected"
83. Mid shot of Cuban citizen casting her vote
84.Close up of sign saying " Election for congressmen and delegates"
AP Television
Havana, Cuba - 17 Dec 2004
85. Wide shot Malecon Avenue with US interests snowman and "75" sign - a reference to 75 dissidents jailed the year before
86. US Interests Section fence with "75" sign and Cuban guard
AP Television - AP Clients only
Havana - 30 January 2004
87.Castro arriving to anti-FTAA conference
88.SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban President:
"We know that Mr. Bush committed himself with the mafia of the Cuban National Foundation to
assassinate me. Simply, I said it once before and today I'll say it clearer: I accuse him!"
89.Cutaway of attendees
90.SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Fidel Castro, Cuban President:
" I don't care how I die. But rest assured, if they invade us, I'll die in combat. Thank you."
91. Pull out from podium to audience
AP Television
Santa Clara - 20 Oct 2004
92. Wide shot audience
93. Castro walking and falls forward, aides rush to his side
94. Wide shot of audience
95. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Fidel Castro, President of Cuba:
"Dear guests, I ask for your forgiveness, for having fallen down."
96. Wide of audience applauding as Castro speaks
97. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Fidel Castro, President of Cuba:
"Do not suspend this cultural event, there has been many artists working on this event. Please me, please. I don't want sadness, I want joy, I want happiness, happiness for all."
98. Wide shot of event
Cubavision
30 October, 2006
99. Various of Fidel Castro appearing on camera after surgery, in a lift and holding a telephone
Cubavision
Havana, 31 January 2007
100. Chavez saluting Cuban President Fidel Castro as he walks into his hospital room
111. Chavez hugging Fidel
112. SOUNDBITE (Spanish): Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President:
"A strong hug, from millions (of people), you know? The hugs of millions. This is the hug of millions of people, not only me. I am here to express the sentiments of millions who admire you, who love you and need you and we follow you step by step."
113. SOUNDBITE (Spanish): Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President:
"You are speaking with more strength now than when you went to Caracas 48 years ago. I have been calibrating your voice, checking the decibels." 114. SOUNDBITE (Spanish): Fidel Castro, Cuban President:
"I hadn't learnt back then (to give speeches)."
115. Various of Castro and Chavez sitting talking
Cubavision
Havana 15 January 2008
116. Various of Castro meeting Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva meeting
STORYLINE:
An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when the new
parliament meets Sunday.
"I will not aspire to nor accept - I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept - the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by
Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.
The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency.
Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery.
He survived hundreds of assassination attempts, a U.S.-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and a standoff with Washington over Soviet missiles that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war and the end of the Cold War.
Castro came to power in the Cuban revolution on Jan. 1, 1959, and, monarchs excepted, was the world's longest ruling head of state.
With his bushy beard, olive-green fatigues and cigar, Castro was for decades a living symbol of socialist revolution.
The robust image lingered long after the beard turned white and scraggly and the cigar was abandoned for health reasons.
The defiance, too, endured.
"Socialism or death" remained his rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and left the island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.
Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba's sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation.
His official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.
Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees.
In 1948 he married Mirta Diaz Balart, who gave birth to Fidel Jr. on Sept. 1, 1949. They divorced in 1956.
Castro never remarried - at least officially.
Castro was a university student when he was inspired by Cuban independence hero Jose Marti's passionate nationalism and calls for Latin American unity.
At 21, he joined an ill-conceived expedition against the Trujillo dictatorship in the nearby Dominican Republic and barely escaped with his life. A year later, he participated in an urban revolt in Colombia.
Castro led a failed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago, Cuba, in 1953 in which most of his comrades were killed.
Castro's defence speech during his trial became a rallying point for opponents of then-President Fulgencio Batista.
Freed under a pardon, Castro went to Mexico and organised a rebel band that returned and rallied support in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains.
The guerrillas gained power and staunch U.S.-ally Batista fled Cuba on New Year's Day 1959.
Upon his triumphal entry into Havana, Castro declared, "Power does not interest me, and I will not take it." But from the beginning, he was clearly Cuba's leader.
Members of the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed. The revolution's first president, jurist Manuel Urrutia, complained of the turn toward communism and resigned.
Although, the United States was the first country to recognise Castro after his guerilla movement seized power, within months, his radical economic reforms and rapid trials of Batista supporters unsettled the United States.
Washington began working to oust Castro by fair means and foul: officially cutting U.S. purchases of sugar, the island's economic mainstay, whilst the Central Intelligence Agency plotted to kill him.
When it pressured him, Castro fought back, confiscating $1 billion in U.S. assets, promising to seize American properties "down to the nails in their shoes." and inviting Soviet aid and trade.
In a September 1960 trip to the United Nations, Castro, as Cuba's new prime Minister, bear-hugged Soviet Premier Nikita S. Krushchev, though he also met a future foe, then Vice-President Richard Nixon on the same trip.
The next month, President Eisenhower slapped a trade embargo on Cuba - later strengthened by President John F. Kennedy - banning virtually all U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine.
Washington severed diplomatic ties with Havana on Jan. 3, 1961.
On April 16, 1961, as U.S. pressure mounted and Cuba turned increasingly to the Soviet bloc, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist.
One day later, on April 17, with President Kennedy now in the White House, 1,400 Cuban exiles trained on Eisenhower's orders stormed Cuba's south coast.
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a humiliating disaster for Washington and it's Cuban allies.
The popular uprising the exiles hoped for never occurred, and a hesitant United States provided little air cover. Pinned down by Castro's forces, more than 1,100 were captured as Castro's troops crushed the invasion within a few days.
The next major confrontation brought the world close to nuclear conflict - it was known as the Cuban missile crisis.
On Oct. 22, 1962, Kennedy announced that aerial reconnaissance had shown Soviet nuclear missiles were present in Cuba.
After a tense week of backroom diplomacy, Krushchev agreed to pull out the weapons. Castro was livid that he wasn't consulted, but won a critical concession: the United States pledged not to invade Cuba.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries reshaped Cuba. They opened 10,000 new schools, wiped out chronic illiteracy, and built a universal health care system generally regarded as the best in Latin America.
Castro nationalised industry and the sugar and tobacco plantations, and established a heavily collectivised, ultimately inefficient farm system. Deprived of $1 billion in U.S. trade, Castro relied on sugar and nickel to obtain Soviet-bloc oil and manufactured goods.
Soviet economic subsidies eventually reached US $4 billion a year, according to U.S. estimates.
Castro built a rigid one-party political system, cobbling revolutionary groups into a single movement that became the new Cuban Communist Party, with him as first secretary.
Labour unions lost the right to strike. The Catholic Church and other religious institutions were harassed. Neighbourhood "revolutionary defence committees" kept an eye on everyone.
In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners, a number that dropped to about 330 by early 2006, according to activists.
Castro duelled with Washington as he transformed his Caribbean island nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Key West, Florida, into a Marxist state, first as a Soviet ally and then on its own.
As he reshaped his country, Castro became a beacon of solidarity for activists across the Third World as he backed revolutionary movements in Latin American and Africa.
In it's most far-reaching intervention, Cuba, backed by the Soviet Union, sent thousands of troops to Angola in the mid 1970s to aid the marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) that ruled after independence in 1975 in it's war against right-wing rebels backed by South Africa, the United States and Zaire.
US Administration after US administration denounced his foreign "adventurism."
His international prestige reached a peak with his 1979-1982 chairmanship of the movement of nonaligned nations. But it was quickly tarnished by his support for the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan.
In 1980, people desperate to leave the island poured into foreign embassies. Castro opened the floodgates and let 125,000 unhappy countrymen flee to Florida by boat through Mariel port.
Among them were many convicts and mental patients - later called "Marielitos" - put on the boats before then-President Carter decided to block the route.
In August 1994, tough economic times were blamed in part for a new Cuban exodus in summer 1994, with an estimated 30,000 taking to the sea in rafts.
This led the United States to reverse its long-standing "open door" policy towards Cuban immigrants.
The 1980s and early 1990s brought a further string of setbacks for Castro.
The then-American President Ronald Reagan adopted a tough anti-Castro line, and in 1983 ordered a U.S.-led invasion of Grenada to oust a pro-Cuba leadership.
Nicaragua's Marxist Sandinistas, in power since the 1979 revolution, held a 1989 election against Castro's advice and lost. El Salvador's leftist guerrillas laid down their arms in 1992 and lost elections two years later.
And socialism's collapse in Eastern Europe sent Cuba's economy into a tailspin and forced Castro into policies he disdained: an opening to foreign capitalists, limited private enterprise.
The economy, aided by a tourism boom, slowly recovered in the second half of the 1990s, though Castro fretted about the influence U.S. dollars had on his egalitarian society.
Despite U.S. laws tightening the embargo in 1992 and 1996, the end of the Cold War also ended some of the hostility Cuba had faced.
Castro re-established relationships with many Latin American and European countries that found the U.S. embargo anachronistic in a diplomatic offensive capped by the historic January 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II.
At least one of Castro's battles even gained the support of a majority of Americans.
After a little boy named Elian Gonzalez was rescued off South Florida in late 1999, polls showed most Americans siding with Elian's father in Cuba - and thus Castro - in the battle to return the motherless child to his native Cuba.
Castro won a resounding victory over his Cuban exile enemies in June 2000 when Elian's father returned home with his boy after winning a seven-month battle against Miami relatives who fought for custody of the child, maintaining they could give him a better life off the communist island.
Exiles from the island include a daughter, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, who fled to the United States in 1993, and Castro's younger sister, Juana, who became a U.S. citizen and reviled him as "a monster."
But many who stayed behind lionised Castro and saw in him a successor to Jose Marti, Cuba's independence hero.
Fearless and a fiery orator, he stirred in many a new sense of national pride.
Castro also maintained a relationship with former staunch allies and the non-aligned as the 21st century began, as Russia's President Putin was hosted in Havana in late 2000 and made trips to both Libya and Iran in 2001.
New American interest in Cuba under U.S. President Bill Clinton helped pass a law in late 2000 allowing the first direct sales of American food to the island in four decades.
But after George W. Bush assumed the presidency shortly afterward, the United States tightened travel and trade restrictions and studied ways to ensure a democratic transition in a post-Castro Cuba.
Yet Castro resisted U.S. demands for multiparty elections and his security services continued to harass his opponents.
Castro ignored Jimmy Carter's suggestions for democratic reforms when the former American president visited the island in May 2002.
At the end of Carter's visit Castro declared, "All my life I believed in change. I promised, because we are always changing, but changing towards the future. We are looking ahead not backwards, all those have gone backwards in corruption and other things. We want to go forwards not backwards."
In March 2003 a Cuban government crackdown imprisoned 75 government opponents accused of receiving money from US officials to undermine the island's system - a charge the activists and the US government denied.
Cuba received worldwide condemnation when the dissidents got prison terms of up to 28 years, but Castro was unapologetic. Fifteen of the original 75 were out on medical parole by late 2005.
In December 2004 the US Interests Section in Havana put up Christmas decorations that included a reference to dissidents jailed by Fidel Castro's government.
The trimmings included a Santa Claus, candy canes and white lights wrapped around palm trees - and a sign reading "75," a reference to the 75 Cuban dissidents jailed the year before.
Cubans got a forewarning of life after Castro on June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the searing sun.
Talk of Castro's death had long been taboo, and Cubans expressed shock, then grief, then terror of what the future could hold.
On October 2004 Cuban President Fidel Castro's advancing age and ultimately his mortality were resoundingly brought home after he fractured a knee and arm when he tripped and fell at a public event.
AP Television News footage of Castro's fall showed the Cuban leader tripped on a concrete step after descending the stairs from the stage after a speech and fell forward, hard on his right side.
Cubans watching on state television did not see the fall, only several security men running off to the side.
Aides and security agents immediately surrounded the president and helped him to a folding chair.
"I will do what is possible to recover as fast as possible, but as you can see I can still talk," Castro told television viewers, sweating profusely into his olive green uniform from the pain. "Even if they put me in a cast, I can continue in my work."
The Cuban leader laughed off persistent rumours that his health was failing, most recently a 2005 report that he had Parkinson's disease.
On 26 July 2006, the Cuban President celebrated Cuba's Revolution Day by attending a rally of party faithful. That was the last time Castro was seen in public.
Five days later, on July 31, 2006, Castro stunned the nation and the world when he announced he had undergone surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers as head of the government and the Communist Party to his brother Raul, five years younger, and for decades the nation's number 2.
At the end of that month, Castro underwent emergency intestinal surgery and his brother Raul Castro became acting leader of the country.
While Castro himself was not seen in public, video of him meeting his chief ally, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, appeared on television while Chavez was on a trip to Havana for a meeting of the 14th Annual Non-Aligned Summit, which the Cuban leader was unable to attend.
By end October 2006 the Cuban leader appeared on national television looking particularly frail after having undergone surgery.
Castro's actual medical condition was kept a state secret, fuelling internal and external speculation as to his precise physical state. Cuban officials insisted he was on the road to recovery.
Cubans marked his 80th despite their leader's absence. During an event held at the Karl Marx theatre an announcer read out a message from Castro.
"Dear friends, I say goodbye with great sadness for not having had the chance to thank you personally and hug each and everyone of you."
In early 2007, a Spanish newspaper, El Pais, quoting a doctor who had treated the ailing Castro, reported that he was "gravely ill".
Speculation about his impending death was again rife, but within weeks Cuban state television showed him looking healthier in the company of Hugo Chavez.
Castro spoke with some of his old vigour to his great ally, "I told the doctor 'I am going to try', this is far from being a lost battle."
In September of 2007, Cuban television aired an hour long taped interview showing a healthier but still frail looking Castro responding to persistent rumours of his death circulating primarily in Miami.
"(They were saying) that I was on my deathbed, that I was dying the day after tomorrow. No one knows what day one is going to die, " he said.
In December 2007, the ailing President said in a letter read on state television that he did not intend to cling to power forever or stand in the way of a younger generation.
Castro's famous words as he came ashore to Cuba from Mexico in December, 1956 as a young revolutionary were purportedly, "'I am Fidel Castro and I have come to liberate our country."