The beloved departed comandate,

More than other you long ruled, since romping to Havana in style to oust Fulgencio Batista. By a mixture of charisma and tyranny you dominated. You ran the show your way: control freak, intolerant of contradiction and immune to compromise.

You turned a small island into a pocket superpower. Upon the Latin America, you fomented wages of revolution. Upon Africa you dispatched armies to flare up communist fires. Criminal fugitives and political misfits found refuge under your shade.

Your life become a price of the bloody CIA. Attempts to the price were made. Ranging from farcical, of your being offered a exploding cigar. To near misses, of bar lady at Hilton administering botulism in your milkshake.

Yet you survived. You survived to deliver another harangue to United States. To see President Kennedy die from the brute of the bullet from his countryman. To see president Eisenhower wither out. To see President Nixon, who thought you were naive for a leader, being humiliated for Watergate adventures. You rebuffed them all. Until that day, when a black president charmed and warmed his way to stroll the streets of Havana.

You survived the Bay of Pigs. A mine that was set against you become your crowning triumph. You killed the stooges forsaken by President Kennedy, and even by their gods. And thereafter, you nearly triggered a world apocalypse in the America-Soviet grandstanding. The Cuba missile crisis. Never again, has the world experienced been such tense. A menu only a comandate could serve.

But you could be ungrateful. You left your friend, your dear friend in revolution, Che Guevara to ignominiously die in the battle hole that was Bolivia. You could have done more to save him, but you just stared, indifferently, and did nothing.

Yet you were an inspirational leader, full of action and unprecedented charisma. You were a master strategist, and deep analyst of issues. You created a country with overflowing doctors, yet full of deprived. The winds carrying the news of your death are triggering mixed reactions.The winds are leaving sullen faces and mourning upon the face of admirers. They are cavalcades of joy and cheering on those your rule they detested. That a complete man, for life is to cause joy and pain.

Dear the departed comandate. This is how it has been. For the new order to rise, the old must retire. Retire.