Cuba marked the 50th anniversary of its revolution yesterday with a demonstration that the old guard remains firmly in power.

Fidel Castro, 82, “the Maximum Leader”, who has not been seen in public since undergoing intestinal surgery nearly two and a half years ago, published a short message on the front page of Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, congratulating “our heroic people” on the half-century of revolutionary rule. His younger brother Raúl, 77, who took over as President in February, delivered a speech to 3,000 of the party faithful last night from the same balcony in Santiago de Cuba, where Fidel declared victory after the flight of the dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959.

The celebrations were scaled back after the Communist island, known for mass military parades, was battered by hurricanes and an economic crisis that has left it unable to pay its debts and derailed incipient reforms. The anniversary was marked instead with local dances and concerts, including a performance by the popular group Los Van Van, outside the US Interests Section in Havana. The Government handed out white T-shirts emblazoned with a red 50 on the front.

President Morales of Bolivia pulled out of the party but President Chávez of Venezuela, who considers himself Fidel Castro’s “spiritual son”, did show up.

In a TV appearance on New Year’s Eve Raúl Castro delivered a sombre message that, 50 years after the revolution, many difficulties still lay ahead. “There are many positive things, but at the same there are new problems that we have to confront,” he said. “We haven’t had peace, we haven’t had tranquillity.”

Raúl Castro, who used his long-time position as Defence Minister to expand the military’s control of the economy to include retail outlets and hotels, is thought to favour China’s economic model. He faces opposition from his domineering older brother however.

The younger Castro has experimented with reforms such as allowing Cubans to buy computers and mobile phones but at exorbitant prices in Cuba’s tourist currency, which is worth 24 times the local peso, and with no access to the internet.

His agricultural reforms, allowing peasants to sell surplus produce and lease fallow land, have been set back by economic troubles after three hurricanes that caused an estimated $10 billion (£7 billion) in damage last year and wiped out almost a third of the country’s crops.

Last week Raúl Castro told the National Assembly that the state had to adopt austerity measures and that 2009 would be a year of much uncertainty.

With the departure of George Bush, the Cuban Revolution will have outlasted ten US presidents despite a US economic embargo, a US-backed invasion and numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Hopes run high for an improvement in relations after the inauguration of Barack Obama, who has promised to allow Cuban-Americans to visit the country more freely and send money to relatives on the island.

Fidel Castro wrote in a recent Granma column: “A discussion with Obama can take place wherever he should wish.” But he added: “He should be reminded that the theory of the carrot and the stick will not have any effect in our country.”

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