HAVANA -- Retired President Fidel Castro has gone four weeks without publishing any "Reflections" on current events and his last meeting with a visiting head of state was in November, prompting speculation both inside and outside Cuba about a possible deterioration in his health.

Now 82, Fidel effectively stepped down in July 2006 after being stricken with a serious gastrointestinal ailment. He was formally succeeded last February by younger brother Raul Castro.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that "the former Fidel, who went through the streets and towns at daybreak ... with his uniform and embracing the people. It won't happen. It will remain a memory," Chavez said during his Sunday radio and television program "Alo Presidente."

The Cuban leader has not appeared in public for two-and-a-half years.

"Fidel's going to live, as he is living and will always live, beyond physical life," added Chavez, a devoted friend of the aging revolutionary and Cuba's staunchest ally.

The most recent of Fidel's "Reflections" was published Dec. 15, and observers have been surprised by his silence on a number of developments that would ordinarily have elicited comment from the convalescing former president.

He did not even comment on the almost unanimous support that Cuba received at the three regional summits that took place in mid-December in Brazil where participants called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to lift the economic embargo that Washington has imposed on the communist-ruled island since 1962.

After in November receiving the leaders of China, Hu Jintao, and Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, there have been no reports of any officials meeting with Fidel Castro.

It is not known whether Castro has even met with friends or admirers, including two Latin American leaders who visited Cuba last week: Panamanian President Martin Torrijos and Ecuadorian leader Rafael Correa.

Amid the silence and with Chavez acting as Fidel's unofficial spokesman, speculation has arisen abroad as to the state of the Cuban's health.

Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley last week did not rule out that his country's president, Michelle Bachelet, could meet with the ailing leader during her trip to Cuba in February, but he revealed that such a meeting had not been included on the agenda because of Castro's "delicate state of health."

In Havana, observers and analysts emphasize that the former head of state had just written a 16-word message to congratulate the Cuban people on Jan. 1 on the 50th anniversary of the revolution he led to topple dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

The central event of the anniversary, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, was austere and low-profile after a tough year on the economic front for the island, which also saw three hurricanes sweep across the country causing damage amounting to some $10 billion.

Current President Raul Castro spoke then about the tasks facing the "leaders of the future."