Cuba has marked 100 years since Fidel Castro's birth as Cubans question the promises of the socialist revolution he led for nearly half a century and whether his successors are up to the job.
Cuba's Communist Party has spent the week celebrating the late revolutionary leader with exhibitions, concerts and conferences.
But the August 13 centenary comes amid one of Cuba's worst crises in living memory, with acute shortages of food and water and chronic power cuts.
'Redeemer in his youth'
Castro is remembered by supporters as having guided Cuba through multiple crises, including US intervention, embargoes, assassination plots and the hardship caused by the collapse of Cuba's main ally and benefactor, the Soviet Union.
Historian and opposition activist Manuel Cuesta, 63, recalled seeing Castro as a "redeemer" in his youth.
Today, he believes worsening living conditions have led many Cubans to see Castro as the "original architect of this national disaster."
Historian Hassan Perez, a former student leader and close collaborator of Castro, acknowledged that the centenary was arriving under "the most complex conditions that could have been imagined."
The social contract forged by the Revolution, he said, "has eroded" in recent years.
Yet affection for Castro survives for many.
