Castro greets 76th birthday at school "happiest man in the world"

HAVANA - Fidel Castro spent his 76th birthday Tuesday visiting a newly reconstructed school and declaring that his socialist revolution will survive.

"This birthday is very happy, perhaps the happiest I have known," Castro said in statement carried in the Communist Party daily Granma. "Today, we are accompanied by the conviction that there exists no force in the world that is capable of destroying our dreams."

Sending a message to those "who thought that the revolution could not survive," Castro spoke of his country's "heroic people determined to confront, resist and conquer."

Born on Aug. 13, 1926, in the eastern community of Biran, Castro marked his birthday amid growing determination by the island's Communist Party leadership that Cuba's political and economic system remain unchanged after Castro's lifetime.

Lawmakers voted unanimously in late June to make socialism an "irrevocable" part of the constitution and declare that "capitalism will never return again" to the Caribbean island.

Castro's designated successor is his younger brother, 71-year-old Defense Minister Raul Castro, the Cuban Communist Party's first vice president.

Known for his all-night work sessions, Castro arrived at the Abel Santamaria Special School for disabled children shortly after midnight and received a birthday serenade by workers, teachers, students and parents gathered to greet him.

Touring the reconstructed school for disabled children, Castro told the group he was "the happiest man in the world" to visit with them.

"None of you have to congratulate me," Castro reportedly told them. "I am the one who should be congratulating you."

Dressed in his traditional olive green uniform, the bearded revolutionary has been touring school renovation sites around Havana in the late night and early morning hours, thanking workers for their labors.

Castro traditionally keeps up his regular work schedule on his birthday. While he sometimes stops to share a birthday cake with schoolchildren, no other public celebrations are held.

Children's Code***At the heart of the issue is Cuba's steadfast portrayal of itself as a society in which ''normality" for its 11 million people, especially children, means support for Castro's ruling Communist Party. Article 3 of the legal Children's Code, calls on ''society and the state [to] work for the efficient protection of youth against all influences contrary to their communist formation."

That means, according to Marta Molina, a Cuban psychiatrist who went into exile last year, that children who don't follow the party line not only run into trouble with authorities but get no help from psychiatrists. All Cuban psychiatrists are under government orders to defend communism in such cases, Molina said, and ''because of the lack of adequate independent counseling, the children frequently became depressed."

She treated more than 500 children in Cuba who had ''serious psychological problems as a result of their own disagreement with the communist ideology or their parents' refusal to indoctrinate them," Molina said. Based on the government's view of normality, Cuban officials have impugned the sanity of persistent Castro critics, arguing in effect that opposition to the regime is so abnormal that dissidents must be mentally ill.***

Castro's Cuba Bad for Business*** The experience of foreign investors in Cuba is replete with horror stories. In 1995, when the "liberalizing" law was passed, the Cuban government unilaterally canceled Spanish utility company Endesa's investments in hotels. Mexico's Grupo Domos found itself arbitrarily slapped with enormous back-tax penalties, and Canada's First Key Project Technologies' proposal to build a $350 million power plant was stolen by the Cuban government and shopped around elsewhere.

Cuba last year devalued its currency by 18 percent and fell behind in debt payments of $500 million to private banks and firms in France, Spain, Japan, Canada, Chile and Venezuela. (This does not include the repayment of government trade credits to France for the last four years and the principal on foreign debt of $35 billion.) With export prices down in nickel, sugar and tobacco, along with a fall in tourism and remittances from abroad, Cuba will remain an economic basket case. Doing business in countries that violate labor rights is not considered good business practice.

In Cuba, workers in foreign joint ventures are paid $400 to $500 a month, except that the Cuban government contracts the workers and pays them 400 to 500 pesos, or $20 a month, instead. Exploitation of child labor is officially tolerated, and it is commonplace to find children as young as 8 who are working. Finally, liberalizing exports to Cuba will produce a revenue windfall for customs brokerages, wholesale, distribution and retail stores -- all government-operated. This will provide increased money for Mr. Castro's intelligence and security services and neighborhood vigilante organizations, further postponing democracy and economic freedom in Cuba. There are a score of countries in the Caribbean Basin that embrace free markets, political democracy and institutional reforms, thereby offering far greater opportunities than Cuba.***

Fri Jul 26,12:34 PM ET

Cuban President Fidel Castro attends a rally marking the anniversary of his initial armed uprising in 1953, July 26, 2002. Castro thanked U.S. legislators for voting to lift a ban on Americans traveling to Cuba, and gloated over the troubles of American capitalism, from corporate fraud scandals to falling stock prices. REUTERS/Rafael Perez

Fidel Castro - Cuba

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