Cuban President Fidel Castro resigned his post at the helm of the Caribbean island nation's socialist government on Feb. 19, 2008. Rumours had been flying about the state of his health ever since he delegated his powers to his brother Raúl in July 2006. Castro lives with the certainty that few figures will ever match his influence during their lifetimes, and few will have stirred such diverse passions: the support of many citizens who haven't forgotten what Cuba was like before he took power in 1959, the enthusiasm of the political left in the 1960s and 1970s, and the hatred of the tens of thousands of Cubans who fled into exile. At stake is the viability of the system that imprisoned dozens of dissidents and which has survived the hostility of the world's superpower and its closest neighbour, the United States. The saga continues to unfold while Havana seeks links with a new wave of leftist governments in Latin America that nevertheless are following a different path -- that of democracy.