we feel proud with our clean record to relation to this problem. reporter: call it pride or selective reasoning, but he never lost faith in the revolution. opponents concede his popularity diminished as his beard grew whiter, but he continued to command fear and respect. he would eventually out live many of his critics and out last ten u.s. administrations. in the end, it was illness, not washington, that forced him to retire. passing cuba s leadership to his younger brother, raoul, in his last year he only appeared occasionally, mostly in photos looking frail. at times he tried to play the role of elder statesman, but more and more he simply seemed inkons can kwen shal. translator: the cuban government has been very ago aisle. it has slowly removed him from the scene. it would have been one thing had he abruptly died back on july 31st, 2006. instead his image and importance
fire in the streets, maybe the army would divide against itself, there would be pro an-liberalization people, there would be years and years of pent-up frustrated ambitions on the part of less senior cuban officials that would certainly break into the open. and now that it has happened? reporter: well, what happened was we really had kind of a slow motion transition that nobody recognized as a transition for a while. in 2006 fidel castro became ill. there was a sort of two-year twilight zone there, and then one day we woke up and he was no longer the leader. meanwhile, his brother raoul, who it must be said for a long time was not a well-known figure and thought to be mostly a non-entity in cuba was actually in control.
under fidel castro s watch cuba was not a welcome place to some of the world s foremost leaders, but things started changing in recent years under fidel s brother raoul. pope francis visited in 2015 and called on the communist nation to open itself to the world. he prays one major step in that direction, restoring diplomatic ties with the uted states. this historic visit with president obama ace years ago. for decades it was close to americans, and look at this that s not the holdover from the cold war, the country being closed to americans is the holdover. but this tick purchase, obama s visit marked progress above all, a new way of doing things in a new era. both the u.s. and cuba shut the door on a long-standing feud and opened their own doors to one another. let s bring in cnn correspondent rafael romo live
onset. he has many years of cover politics in latin american. talk to us about the ramifications of knowing this former leader of cuba is dead. when you think about what is going the happen next, a lot of people are trying to figure out what is next for cuba. the reality is that ten years ago when fidel castro first got sick and he had his brother raoul take power, that s when the success plan start. if you take a look at the new congress, the communist congress in cuba, all of the new leaders, albeit younger, follow the exact same political persuasion. so for those people who think that the castro s death may mean an overnight change in terms of the regime or the politics of cuba, it may take a bit longer than that because the reality is that a lot of the young people venezuela have been
i think that will remain now. there will not be some big, shocking transition. raoul may feel a little more freedom to maneuver, though fidel castro hasn t really been much in control or even seemingly very lucid the last seven or eight years, he was still sitting there. he could still he was still i don t think anybody doubted he could create a fuss if he chose to do that. now, at last, that possibility is 100% removed. raoul will have a little bit more freedom to do as he chooses, but you re not going to see an abrupt change. if you do, it will be on the american side. president-elect trump was, you know, spoke very negatively of the u.s. relations with cuba during the last few weeks of his