On April 7

On this day in ...
... 1930, Vilma Espín (left) was in born Santiago de Cuba, the daughter of well-to-do parents with ties to the Bacardi Rum Company. Among the 1st women in Cuba to earn a chemical engineering degree, Espín did a year of postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning home and becoming active in the antigovernment guerrilla movement in Cuba. (photo credit) In a rebel camp in the Sierra Maestra she met Raúl Castro, whom she soon married. Founder of the Cuban Federation of Women in 1960, she took part in politics thereafter as a member of Cuba's Council of State. Espín died in Havana in 2007.

(Prior April 7 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Adiós a Fidel Castro

Until now he was the longest-serving leader of any nation-state in the world; indeed, he's shown at left addressing the U.N. General Assembly in 1960, nearly a half-century ago. This morning that speaker, Cuba's Fidel Castro, resigned and transferred power to his brother, Raúl Castro, at 76 the younger of the 2 by 5 years.
Here's a roundup of some of the commentary already online:
La Prensa, Havana, has the full text of Castro's resignation, in Spanish. And the English version of Castro's address to his "dear compatriots" is available at The New York Times.
Le Monde, Paris, reports on dissidents' "mistrust" and "hope."
Politicos have weighed in, too, among them British Foreign Secretary David Milband and, in the United States, President George W. Bush, Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. Not a peep so far on Mike Huckabee's website -- nor anything yet found on the web from leaders more friendly to Castro, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
IntLawGrrls' prior posts on Cuba, a number recounting aspects of that country's decades-long tensions with the United States, are here.