(CBS/AP) This report was written by CBS News Havana Producer Portia Siegelbaum.

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Not so long ago, Cuba President Fidel Castro said he would not cling to power if his health interfered with his leadership. "I'll call the [Communist] Party," said Castro, "tell them I don't feel in condition" and that someone else should take over.

And that's what he's done, at least temporarily. In a Monday night announcement that took people totally by surprise, the longtime Cuban leader said he is temporarily handing over power to his younger brother, the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Second Secretary of the Communist Party, and other government and Party officials.

In a letter read on national television at the end of the evening newscast by Presidential Secretary Carlos Valenciaga, Castro said he had undergone "complicated" surgery for "sustained" intestinal bleeding that "obligated" him to rest for several weeks.

He blamed his illness on stress due to his heavy schedule including his recent visit to Argentina for a MERCOSUR trade bloc meeting, a side trip to the Argentine hometown of his former comrade in arms, the late Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and participation in the "People's Summit" at the University of Cordoba in Spain.

These travels, says Castro in the announcement read on television, were followed immediately by two speeches in Cuba last Wednesday, the last time he was seen in public. The missive describes those dates as "days and nights of continuous work with barely any sleep."

It was precisely this high visibility in recent days that made Monday night's announcement so unexpected, according to many Cubans. The previous week Miami's Cuban exile community had again been awash in rumors of Castro's demise, rumors that filter through to the island. But his trip to Argentina put a stop to the gossip. Monday night's news refueled it.

"Is this the beginning of the end?" asked Nidia Alfonso in a tremulous voice. The economics professor at the prestigious CUJAE College of Engineering expressed a fear voiced by several other Cubans with whom I spoke immediately after the announcement was made.

The half dozen or so Cubans I spoke to Monday night were most unsettled by Castro's handing over power - even if only provisionally - to Raul Castro, the man who has long been designated as successor to Fidel.

They take it as a sign that his condition is serious – creating uncertainty about the future. "We just had to take my neighbor to the health clinic. Her blood pressure went up after hearing the announcement," said Matilde Velasquez, a secretary and Castro adherent.

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