Cuban-Americans in New Jersey rejoice in news of Castro’s death

Whether this opening will produce a Cuba with less poverty and repression, and more economic opportunity for its people is still open to question, but Fidel Castro’s death does not represent a new opportunity to unravel the revolution.

Castro, who outlasted a crippling US trade blockade as well as many plots to kill him, died 10 years after a serious illness led him to turn over power to his brother.

His younger brother, President Raul Castro, announced the news shortly after midnight (10.30 am IST on Saturday) but gave no details of the cause of death.

Castro ousted then-dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Castro’s remains will be cremated, and his ashes toured around Cuba until his state funeral on December 4.

Responding to calls for help from the Angolan Marxist guerrilla leader Agostinho Neto who had seized Luanda during a bloody war from the Portuguese, Castro sent troops to Angola.

In his book, “The America We Deserve”, Trump said Castro should be arrested and tried.

News of Castro’s death was long anticipated and had been the subject of countless rumors over the decades, so that it became something of a running joke. President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Indian leaders expressed sympathy.

“Fidel Castro is dead!” Castro’s socialist economy began to feel the pressure of shortages and the winds of change couldn’t be blocked forever, nor the march of faith into a land of official atheism. “The United States reaffirms its support for deepening our engagement with the Cuban people now and in coming years”.

“It’s sad that one finds joy in the death of a person — but that person should never have been born”, said Pablo Arencibia, 67, a teacher who fled Cuba 20 years ago.

Russian president Vladimir Putin described him as the “symbol of an era”.

Unlike various occasions over the years, this time it was not a hoax: the man most Cubans grown up with as their country’s leader had died. “He inspired the Cuban people to join us in our own struggle against apartheid”.

Rodriguez became emotional while discussing her grandparents struggle to leave Cuba to escape Castro’s regime. “He incarnated the Cuban revolution, in both its hopes and subsequent disillusionments”, he said in a statement.

While acknowledging the late president was a “controversial figure”, Trudeau remembered the late president as a “larger-than-life leader”, who made significant improvements to Cuba’s education and health-care systems.

Trump had vowed to reverse Obama’s efforts to open US relations with Cuba if he was elected president, “unless the Castro regime meets our demands – not my demands, our demands”.

Donald Trump called him a “brutal dictator.” Basically, Obama just taught Trump a lesson in staying classy while serving as the leader of the free world.

And as in Venezuela, where the late Hugo Chavez pulled much of the opposition toward the left in its policies even as it rallied against him, some features of Castro’s legacy could well remain staples of Cuba’s politics, as Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer noted. “During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends – bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity”.

Trump will face pressure to reverse Obama’s orders on Cuba from a bloc of mostly Republican Cuban-American lawmakers that has worked to keep tight restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba for years.

Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American senator for Florida, wrote on Twitter, “Is this a real statement or a parody?”

“Those demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners”, he added.

The Cuban community in Miami celebrates the announcement that Fidel Castro died in front of La Carreta Restaurant, early Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016, in Miami.

But in Miami, where many exiles from Castro’s government live, a large crowd waving Cuban flags cheered, danced and banged on pots and pans.