No word, photos on Castro’s birthday

MIAMI – Fidel Castro spent his birthday Monday very much as he did last year’s: fighting illness amid rumors that he is at death’s door.

According to official accounts, he just turned 81. But a leading Cuba expert says anecdotal evidence shows Castro was actually born in 1927 and has lived a lie most of his life. Castro, according to former CIA analyst Brian Latell, just now became an octogenarian.

But whatever Castro’s age, rumors began circulating last week that his health had taken a turn for the worse. And unlike Aug. 13, 2006, which was marked by the first photos of an ailing Castro, this year’s birthday took place without a word or snapshot from the sickly leader.

Celebratory fireworks lit the Havana sky as the clock ticked midnight early Monday, but no photos graced its newspapers.

Even the ubiquitous “Reflections by the Commander in Chief” – the opinion columns Castro started in March – have ground to a halt. After churning out 37 articles – sometimes several a week – Castro has not penned a new one since Aug. 7.

Last week, he failed to call in to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s weekly TV show, and his niece Mariela was quoted as saying “the concern that we all had about losing our leader is now closer to us.”

Mexico’s most influential newspaper, Reforma, reported Monday that Castro had several surgeries in the past few weeks in an attempt to stave off a potentially fatal blood infection. Castro, the paper said, has lost a lot of weight and no longer wishes to receive visitors.

Last July the Cuban government announced that Castro had undergone surgery to stop intestinal bleeding and had delegated power to his brother, Raul. Fidel Castro was last seen in a video on June 5, when he gave a long, rambling interview to Cuban TV reporter Randy Alonso.

“Reforma would not take those kinds of risks unless it had real sources,” said Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairman Joe Garcia, former head of the Cuban American National Foundation. “But it’s like debating whether the new year starts at 12:59 or 1 a.m. It has already happened. The future of Cuba does not depend on an 80-year-old man in the hospital or his little brother.”

Or is it 81?

Latell’s monthly report for the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies’ Cuba Transition Project argues that Castro’s late mother and three sisters several times cited Castro’s year of birth as 1927, a year after the date on his birth records.

“This is a lie he has maintained since he was a kid,” Latell said. “And Fidel has always tried to be consistent about the lies he tells.”