Cuba Will Issue Stamps with Fidel Castro Despite Legal Prohibition

Stamp to be issued in the Island to commemorate the relations between Cuba and North Korea. (123rf.com)

14ymedio biggerEFE/14ymedio, Havana, 4 October 2018 – Next week Cuba will issue the first stamp dedicated to Fidel Castro since the death of the former leader almost two years ago, according to reports from the state entities Correos de Cuba (Cuba’s Post Office) and the Federación Filatélica (Philatelic Federation) speaking to media in Havana.

A month after the death of the former leader, in November of 2016, the National Assembly of People’s Power unanimously approved a bill which prohibited marketing Fidel’s image and the use of his name in public spaces, but this has not prevented the post office from publishing a new stamp.

The stamp dedicated to Fidel will be part of a postal series dedicated to emblematic patriots of Cuba — among them José Martí, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Ignacio Agramonte and the Maceo family — whose inaugural printing will take place on Tuesday October 9 in the city of Bayamo, in Granma provinces, the entities told the ruling party newspaper Trabajadores (Workers).

The series will be issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the October 10, 1868 uprising, which marked the beginning of the struggles for Cuban independence from Spain.

Born in 1926, Fidel Castro governed Cuba from the 1959 Revolution until he fell ill in 2006, when he left power in the hands of his brother Raúl, and he died a decade later on November 25, 2016.

The first stamps with a young Fidel date from shortly after the Revolution as part of the state’s policy to support the cult of personality of the leader, but since his death no stamps had been issued with the face that exercised absolute power in Cuba during more than four and a half decades.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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