Havana - Cuba without Fidel Castro was a difficult concept to imagine just a few years ago: omnipresent and tireless over more than four decades since he seized power in 1959, the Cuban leader turns 85 Saturday now discreetly in the background of the island's politics.
Castro, who defines himself as a 'soldier of ideas' since he stepped down from the leadership in late July 2006, now simply publishes his thoughts in Cuban media.
The charismatic man once known for his marathon speeches lasting up to six hours rarely appears in public these days, and it remained uncertain whether he would attend his own birthday celebrations at all this year.
'Attention to other matters which are now a priority has temporarily distanced me from the frequency with which I wrote articles during the year 2010,' Castro himself admitted in his latest text, in early July, devoted to the cancer treatment that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was undergoing in Cuba.
That was also when he was last seen on television, alongside Chavez.
Although Castro's articles were never issued regularly, with some appearing almost on a daily basis and others with long pauses, the current frequency is particularly drawn-out and reminds some of the times that followed the traditional leader's unspecified intestinal illness in late 2006.
At the same time, the Cuban government now led by Fidel's brother Raul, 80, is promoting economic reform aimed at 'updating' the island's communist model. The younger Castro brother says he is hoping to correct mistakes from the past to guarantee the future.
'Either we rectify, or we sink,' Raul Castro said in December.
Raul Castro has said on several occasions that his brother still plays a central role in the island's leadership.
'For as long as he has the strength to do it, and fortunately he is at the height of his political thought, he will continue to make a contribution to revolutionary struggle,' Raul Castro said of his brother in April.
Both have made a point of highlighting their agreements. Fidel Castro has stressed that his brother always consulted him on 'the ideas he was planning' since he took over the leadership, while Raul has said his older brother's ideas remain 'the foundation' of what is being done in Cuba today.
Intellectuals like author Leonardo Padura, however, envisage change in Cuban politics.
'Obviously, Cuba has not been the same with Fidel in charge as with Raul at the helm,' Padura recently told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview.
Like him, many Cubans are watching with interest the ongoing opening to private initiative in some sectors of the island's economy, and plans to allow individuals to buy and sell homes and cars, for example.
'The impression is that, basically, Fidel has handed over his authority and power to Raul over the past five years,' says Michael Shifter, president of the influential Washington-based think-tank Inter-American Dialogue.
'It seems that Fidel is not very close to the reform process led by his brother,' he said.
At the same time, however, there is little to suggest outright disgareement on the changes.
'There have apparently been no important disagreements between the two,' Shifter said.
While Raul seeks his own place in a process that could be historic for Cuba, his brother continues to represent for most Cubans the decades-old ideals of the revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Fidel Castro is hated by some, most notably Cuban exiles in Miami, but for Cubans on the island he personifies both the revolutionary struggle and the successes of its social policies.
'He did a lot for poor people here,' a Cuban pensioner says, although she regrets what she defines as later mistakes.
'The problem was that he relegated the economy and focused a lot on foreign policy,' she says.
Cuba is now busy trying to correct those mistakes, at a time of change that people on the street follow with a mix of hope, disappointment and fear.
And now, at 85, Fidel Castro is no longer the standard-bearer who marks the way for Cuba.
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