Fidel Castro confirmed his exit from the Communist Party leadership Tuesday, ceding power to his brother Raul as delegates prepare to vote on changes that could bring term limits to key posts in Cuba. ? FIDEL CASTRO, 84, who ruled Cuba for 49 years before stepping down due to ill health in 2008, attended the first party Congress since 1997 to formally resign as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The former leader, looking frail in what has become a customary tracksuit, was given a rousing reception by party members before being officially replaced as first secretary by his brother Raul, who had already fulfilled the role in all but name since 2006. President Raul Castro used the first party Congress in 14 years to agree a raft of sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing the socialist state, including allowing Cubans to buy and sell their homes. The radical changes were backed by Fidel in a front page column in the Communist party newspaper Granma, he wrote: "The new generation is called to rectify and change without hesitation all that must be rectified and changed, and to continue demonstrating that socialism is also the art of making the impossible happen." He described "the impossible" as "building and bringing about the revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor, and defending it for half a century from the most powerful military power that ever existed," referring to the United States. Castro has run the country for so long that nearly three-quarters of its people have known no other leader. Although the United States has tried hard to get rid of him, Castro outlasted no fewer than nine American presidents since he took power in 1959. In July 2006, Castro underwent emergency intestinal surgery and has not attended any public events since. The Communist leader -- known for his long-winded anti-American rhetoric -- was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz in 1926 to a wealthy, land-owning family. He received a Jesuit education and graduated from Havana University as a lawyer. But, shocked by the contrast between his own comfortable lifestyle and the dire poverty of so many others, he became a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. In 1953, he took up arms against the regime of President Fulgencio Batista. Aiming to spark a popular revolt, on July 26, Castro led more than 100 followers in a failed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Castro and his brother Raul survived, but were imprisoned. Amnestied after two years, Castro continued to campaign against the Batista regime while in exile in Mexico, and established a guerrilla force known as the July 26 Movement. His revolutionary ideals attracted support in Cuba and in 1959 his forces overthrew Batista, whose regime had become a byword for corruption, decadence and inequality. Cuba's new rulers promised to give the land back to the people and to defend the rights of the poor. Castro insisted his ideology was, first and foremost, Cuban. "There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy," he said at the time. ? He was soon snubbed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and claimed he was driven into the arms of the Soviet Union and its leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Cuba became a Cold War battleground. In April 1961, the United States attempted to topple the Castro government by recruiting a private army of Cuban exiles to invade the island. At the Bay of Pigs, Cuban troops repulsed the invaders, killing many and capturing 1,000. A year later, U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet missiles on their way to sites in Cuba. The world was suddenly confronted with the possibility of all-out nuclear war. The superpowers stood eyeball to eyeball, but it was the Soviet leader who gave way, pulling his missiles out of Cuba in return for a secret withdrawal of U.S. weapons from Turkey. Castro, though, had become America's enemy number one. The CIA tried to assassinate him -- more than 600 times, according to one Cuban minister. Getting him to smoke a cigar packed with explosives was one idea. Other anti-Castro plots were even more bizarre, including one to make his beard fall out and ridicule him. The Soviet Union poured money into Cuba. It bought the bulk of the island's sugar harvest and in return its ships crammed into Havana harbor, bringing in desperately needed goods to beat the American blockade. Despite his reliance on Russian help, Castro put Cuba at the head of the newly emerging Non-Aligned Movement. Yet, in Africa especially, he took sides, sending his troops in to support Marxist guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s. But the 1980s era of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proved catastrophic for Castro's revolution. Moscow in effect pulled the plug on the Cuban economy by refusing to take its sugar any more. Still under American blockade and with its Soviet lifeline cut off, chronic shortages and empty shelves in Cuba were inevitable. Tempers grew shorter as the food queues grew longer. By the mid-1990s, many Cubans had had enough. Thousands took to the sea in a waterborne exodus to Florida. Many drowned. It was a crushing vote of no-confidence in their leader. Even his own daughter Alina Fernandez prefers a life of exile as a dissident in Miami to rule under her "despotic" father. Castro has used U.S. hostility as a reason to reject democratic reforms to his one-party state. But Cuba under his rule has made impressive domestic strides. Good medical care is freely available for all, there is 98 percent literacy, and Cuba's infant mortality rates compare favorably with Western nations. Castro retains his ability to rattle and irritate the United States, lately engaging in a diplomatic tussle with the U.S. Interests Section over a propaganda display outside the building. He has also engineered a rapprochement with oil-rich Venezuela, run by his great friend, Hugo Chavez. While many Cubans detest Castro, others genuinely love him. He is the David who stood up to the Goliath of America. ? Cubans free to trade homes but old guard remains CUBANS can buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in 50 years under reforms approved at a landmark Communist Party congress in Havana seeking to secure the island's socialist future. President Raul Castro also surprised many by proposing that top political positions should be limited to two five-year terms, but hopes of a major shake-up were dashed as the old guard kept a vice-like grip on power. The congress named political veteran Jose Ramon Machado, 80, as second secretary and introduced three new members of the leadership, including Marino Murillo, 50, who has led Raul Castro's reform program. "It's time to end the mentality of inertia," he told the 1,000 delegates gathered in Havana for only the sixth congress since the creation of the Communist Party in 1965. Some 300 reforms were introduced during the congress, aimed at keeping the centrally planned system from collapse but stopping short of embracing a market-led economy. They included the opening up of the private sector, trimming a million state jobs in the coming years and reducing state spending. Many reforms have already begun. Other measures expected to shake up the lives of ordinary Cubans included introducing the right to buy or sell a car or apartment or receive a bank loan. Most Cubans own their homes and do not pay taxes but have only been allowed to exchange, not sell, them until now. No details were given on how sales would operate. The changes were backed by Fidel Castro. Cubans have reacted to the reforms with cautious optimism, hoping that the government follows through with its pledges without harming those who depend on the public sector for employment and other basic needs. | 