Feburary 19 2008

NIMIA HENRIQUEZ
ENGLISH 3




Castro resigns as president, state-run paper reports




WHO: Fidel castro

WHAT:Fidel Castro announced his resignation as president of Cuba and commander-in-chief of Cuba's military Tuesday, according to a letter published in the state-run newspaper, Granma.Fidel Castro, shown in an undated file photo, took power in Cuba in 1959 and reigned with an iron hand.

WHEN: Tuesday

WHERE:HAVANA, Cuba


HOW:To leftist revolutionaries around the world, Castro, with his ubiquitous military fatigues and fiery oratory, became a hero and patron. But for hundreds of thousands of his countrymen who fled into exile rather than live under his thumb, he became an object of intense hatred.
Castro clung stubbornly to a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union disintegrated and most of the rest of the world concluded that state socialism was a bankrupt idea whose time had come and gone."The most vulnerable part of his persona as a politician is precisely his continued defense of a totalitarian model that is the main cause of the hardships, the misery and the unhappiness of the Cuban people," said Elizardo Sanchez, a human rights advocate and critic of the Castro regime.