Fidel Castro Shows His Face for the Time in Three Years

While most of the Western world was focused on the Super Bowl, Fidel Castro came out of hiding to make his first public appearance since 2010. Castro emerged from seclusionÂ to vote in Cuba’s general election on Sunday and is looking good for a guy everyone thought was pretty much dead just a year ago. Here are a couple more shots of Castro’s surprise visit:Â

And one more:

The reason these pictures and Castro’s appearance is so important is because the 86-year-old Castro’s health,Â not unlike Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s currently, is usually a tightly guarded secretâ€”tighter when he’s not doing so well and looser when he’s feeling better. It was just last October that there were reports that Castro had a stroke and was dangerously close to a “neurovegetative state”.Â Russian channel RT.com points out that this “is the first time, the Cuban hero has voted publically in the last three elections since falling ill in 2006 and handing over power to his brother Raul in 2008” and his first public appearance of any kind since 2010. Â

And Castro used his surprise visit to, yes, spread a political message. “The people are truly revolutionary, they have really sacrificed. We don’t have to prove it, history will. Fifty years of the blockade and they haven’t given in,” Castro is quoted as saying in Reuters’s report.