Ashes complete first leg of trip

Associated Press

SANTA CLARA, Cuba

Fidel Castro’s ashes are completing the first leg of a more than 500-mile journey across Cuba, traveling in a flag-draped cedar coffin through small towns and cities where his rebel army fought its way to power nearly 60 years ago.

Just after 7 a.m. Wednesday, an honor guard placed the coffin under a glass box on a trailer behind a Russian jeep. Thousands of soldiers and state security agents saluted the remains as they rolled slowly out of Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution and the cortege made its way to the Malecon seaside boulevard and east into the countryside.

Tens of thousands of people lined the route, which retraces in reverse the path of the triumphant march of Castro and his rebels across the island to enter Havana on Jan. 1, 1959. Many waved flags and shouted “Long may he live!”

For many Cubans, seeing the coffin of a man who dominated life here for a half-century made the idea of a Cuba without Fidel Castro real for the first time since his death Friday night at age 90.