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Raul Castro

SANTIAGO. — Cuban leaders pledged to keep socialism alive but toned down the anti-US rhetoric at Cuba’s first national holiday since re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States on July 20. Yesterday marked the 62nd anniversary of the first offensive by Fidel Castro’s guerrillas against the army of US-backed leader Fulgencio Batista in 1953, starting a rebellion that brought down Batista more than five years later.

The most important holiday on Cuba’s revolutionary calendar, yesterday’s celebration featured artistic performances and patriotic speeches.

Missing were the blistering, anti-imperialist tirades that Fidel Castro, now 88 and retired as president, once made a staple of July 26, the date of the attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago, a city on the eastern end of Cuba some 800 kilometres from Havana.

Current Cuban President Raul Castro has generally softened his critique since reaching detente with US President Barack Obama last December. Obama has chosen to engage Cuba, departing from past presidents who mostly sought to punish Cuba for daring to challenge US hegemony in the re- gion.

Yesterday’s keynote speaker, Vice-President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, called the re-establishment of diplomatic relations the culmination of a first step that began in December. — Reuters.