SAN­TI­A­GO–A wood­en box con­tain­ing Fi­del Cas­tro's ash­es was yes­ter­day placed by his broth­er and suc­ces­sor in­to the side of a gran­ite boul­der that has be­come Cu­ba's on­ly of­fi­cial mon­u­ment to the charis­mat­ic beard­ed rebel who seized con­trol of a US-al­lied Caribbean is­land and trans­formed it in­to a west­ern out­post of So­vi­et-style com­mu­nism that he ruled with ab­solute pow­er for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry.

The pri­vate, ear­ly-morn­ing cer­e­mo­ny was at­tend­ed by mem­bers of Fi­del Cas­tro's fam­i­ly, the rul­ing Polit­buro of the sin­gle-par­ty sys­tem he found­ed, and Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers who in­stalled close­ly al­lied left­ist gov­ern­ments in Venezuela, Bo­livia, Nicaragua and Brazil.

Af­ter nine days of fer­vent na­tion­al mourn­ing and wall-to-wall homages to Cas­tro on state-run me­dia, the gov­ern­ment barred in­de­pen­dent cov­er­age of the fu­ner­al, re­leas­ing a hand­ful of pho­tos and brief de­scrip­tions of the cer­e­mo­ny lat­er in the day.

The cer­e­mo­ny be­gan at 6.39 am when the mil­i­tary car­a­van bear­ing Cas­tro's re­mains in a flag-draped cedar cof­fin left the Plaza of the Rev­o­lu­tion in the east­ern city of San­ti­a­go.

Thou­sands of peo­ple lined the two-mile route to San­ta Ifi­ge­nia ceme­tery, wav­ing Cuban flags and shout­ing "Long live Fi­del!"

The ash­es were de­liv­ered to Cas­tro's younger broth­er and suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Raul Cas­tro, who wore his olive gen­er­al's uni­form as he placed the re­mains in­to a niche in the enor­mous grey boul­der that will serve as his tomb.

The niche was sealed with a green mar­ble plaque em­blazed with the name "Fi­del" in gold let­ters.

The tomb stands to the side of a memo­r­i­al to the rebel sol­diers killed in an at­tack that Cas­tro led on San­ti­a­go's Mon­ca­da bar­racks on Ju­ly 26, 1953, and in front of the mau­soleum of Cuban na­tion­al hero Jose Mar­ti.

As the fu­ner­al end­ed, mar­tial mu­sic could be heard out­side the ceme­tery, where In­es de la Rosa was among the mourn­ers gath­ered. She said she would have liked to watch the in­ter­ment on tele­vi­sion, but "we un­der­stand how they as a fam­i­ly al­so need a bit of pri­va­cy."

The de­ci­sion to keep the fi­nal farewell pri­vate came the morn­ing af­ter Raul Cas­tro an­nounced that Cu­ba would pro­hib­it the nam­ing of streets and mon­u­ments af­ter his broth­er, and bar the con­struc­tion of stat­ues of the for­mer leader and rev­o­lu­tion­ary icon, in keep­ing with his de­sire to avoid a cult of per­son­al­i­ty.

"The leader of the rev­o­lu­tion re­ject­ed any man­i­fes­ta­tion of a cult of per­son­al­i­ty and was con­sis­tent in that through the last hours of his life, in­sist­ing that, once dead, his name and like­ness would nev­er be used on in­sti­tu­tions, streets, parks or oth­er pub­lic sites, and that busts, statutes or oth­er forms of trib­ute would nev­er be erect­ed," Raul Cas­tro told a mas­sive crowd gath­ered in the east­ern city of San­ti­a­go.

He said that Cu­ba's Na­tion­al As­sem­bly would vote in its next ses­sion on the law ful­fill­ing the wish­es of his broth­er, who died last week at 90. The leg­is­la­ture gen­er­al­ly holds a meet­ing in De­cem­ber and un­der Cu­ba's sin­gle-par­ty sys­tem, par­lia­ment unan­i­mous­ly or near-unan­i­mous­ly ap­proves every gov­ern­ment pro­pos­al.

Fi­del Cas­tro, who stepped down in 2006 af­ter falling ill, kept his name off pub­lic sites dur­ing his near half-cen­tu­ry in pow­er be­cause he said he want­ed to avoid the de­vel­op­ment of a per­son­al­i­ty cult. In con­trast, the im­ages of his fel­low rev­o­lu­tion­ary fight­ers Cami­lo Cien­fue­gos and Ernesto "Che" Gue­vara be­came com­mon across Cu­ba in the decades since their deaths.

Mourn­ing for Cas­tro has been fer­vent and in­tense across the coun­try since his death, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al east­ern Cu­ba, where huge crowds have been shout­ing Cas­tro's name and lin­ing the roads to salute the fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion car­ry­ing his ash­es.

"All of us would like to put Fi­del's name on every­thing but in the end, Fi­del is all of Cu­ba," said Juan An­to­nio Gon­za­lez, a 70-year-old re­tired econ­o­mist.

"It was a de­ci­sion of Fi­del's, not Raul's, and I think he has to be re­spect­ed."

Cas­tro's reign over the is­land na­tion was marked by the US-backed Bay of Pigs in­va­sion in 1961 and the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis a year lat­er that brought the world to the brink of nu­clear war. Cas­tro, who out­last­ed a crip­pling US trade em­bar­go as well as dozens, pos­si­bly hun­dreds, of as­sas­si­na­tion plots, died ten years af­ter a life-threat­en­ing ill­ness led him to turn over pow­er to his broth­er. (AP)