SANTIAGO, Cuba (AP) — After a week of national mourning that reached near-religious peaks of adulation, Cuban President Raul Castro announced Saturday that his government would prohibit the naming of streets and monuments after his brother Fidel and bar the construction of statues of him in keeping with the former leader's desire to avoid a cult of personality.
The younger Castro told a massive crowd gathered to pay homage to Fidel Castro in the eastern city of Santiago that the country's National Assembly would vote in its next session on a law fulfilling the wishes of his brother, who died last week at 90 but remains a revolutionary icon.
"The leader of the revolution rejected any manifestation of a cult of personality and was consistent in that through the last hours of his life, insisting that, once dead, his name and likeness would never be used on institutions, streets, parks or other public sites, and that busts, statutes or other forms of tribute would never be erected," Raul Castro said.