One of the first leaders to touch down in Havana for the Fidel Castro memorial service was a fellow longtime and deeply controversial one.
At age 92, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe made the trip to Cuba and has expressed his sympathy to the Cuban people.
"The feeling of deep loss is shared by us in Zimbabwe and, I happen to know, by also a great many communities and leaders in Africa."
Brazil foreign minister Jose Serra and Spain's King Juan Carlos were among others attending the service.
But in the United States, White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed ahead of time President Barack Obama would not be attending.
"The President has decided not to send a presidential delegation to attend the memorial service today. I can tell you, however, that deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes will attend the service, as will the top US diplomat in Cuba, Jeff DeLaurentis."
Tens of thousands of people have continued to honour Fidel Castro in Havana's Revolution Square.
They include a man who was at the centre of an international custody battle between Cuba and the United States.
Elian Gonzalez was just five years old when he was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast in November 1999.
His mother and other Cuban castaways had died trying to reach the US mainland, and his case became a battleground in the long feud between the two countries.
He was eventually returned to his father and grandfather in Cuba after Fidel Castro mounted a vocal international campaign.
Sixteen years later, he has joined the mourners in Havana to pay his own tribute to a man he describes as a father.
"Each person stays with the story that you want, or how you lived it, and the story I know of Fidel in my own flesh, the one the people lived and which is expressed by the people marching today, is the story of Fidel who saved me. It's the story of a Fidel who gave us everything we have, and that is the story that will always stay with me, in spite of all the terrible things people say about him and the falsehoods. I know what I lived, and I don't live indoctrinated. Fidel taught me how to think, and, the moment I had to decide, I decided by myself."
Almost 10,000 kilometres away, and before a barrage of cameras, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was also likening the late 90-year-old to a father figure as he signed a condolence book at the Cuban embassy in Moscow.
"Fidel Castro was a great man, in all its meaning. This is due to his care of the Cuban nation, to which he dedicated his life. Everything he had done and was planning to do was about that. I'm sure that, for the Cuban people as well as for our relations with Cuba, he did more than anybody else. He made a great contribution into the maintenance of morality on the international arena, something that we all don't have enough of today."
Chinese president Xi Jinping has also paid tribute at a wreath-laying ceremony in Beijing.
He has described Fidel Castro as a close comrade and sincere friend who made an immortal and historic contribution to the development of socialism around the world.
Two other South American allies, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and Bolivian president Evo Morales, also travelled to Havana to pay their respects.
One Cuban mourner, Zamira Suarez, says the Castro legacy will live on.
"Like all Cubans, Fidel is a country. We are part of that marvellous country, and we want to send a strong hug to our greatest father."
Nurse Iridis Reboledo also reflected the emotions of the crowd.
"Fidel is Fidel. He's not among us anymore, but he is in our ideas, in our principles, in our values. He is an example for Cuba and for the world. He is our father, our leader."
The sombre mood remains a sharp contrast to the celebrations that have greeted Fidel Castro's death 350 kilometres across the Florida Straits on the US mainland.
There, many - including Cuban dissidents - have a far different view, seeing the man as a dictatorial abuser of human rights who led his country into economic ruin.
