Weeping, hopeful, Cubans look to future without Fidel Castro

President Raul Castro announced the news on national television. Alonso-Rodriguez’s mother died when he was young, and his father stayed behind with sisters and a grandmother who couldn’t leave.

“All of the concessions Barack Obama has granted the Castro regime were done through executive order, which means the next president can reverse them, and that I will do unless the Castro regime meets our demands”, Trump said at a campaign event in Miami in September.

Mr Abbott described him as a brutal dictator who killed thousands of people and reduced his country to poverty, while being an enemy of both U.S. and western values, as well as human decency.

Such a statement probably will irritate Havana, coming after a two-year period of intense diplomatic discussions with Washington that have done more to improve relations between the countries than anything in the past 5 ½ decades. “That’s just human nature”.

Yet despite years of ideological strife and increasing hardship under a US economic embargo, Castro’s Cuba became renowned for high education standards and world-class doctors.

“We’re all celebrating, this is like a carnival”, said 72-year-old Jay Fernandez, who came to Miami when he was 18 in 1961 after he was jailed twice by the Cuban government. The challenge for both sides is to not make the mistake of turning back the clock.

“My father used to give us lessons on Cuban history, geography and culture”, she told Seattle Business magazine.

“Usually we’re full, but today only tourists have come and maybe a few Cubans”.

For Cubans off the island, Castro’s death was cause for celebration.

Perez said the most fitting word to summarize her feelings on Saturday is “complicated”. “That would change the whole narrative of the Cuban Revolution, which Raul wants to preserve”, said Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba.

The crowds dispersed as the night wore on, and Havana’s streets quickly fell quiet as people returned home to digest the historic moment.

There could not be a more stark contrast in the way people of the right and people of the left reacted to the passing of Cuba’s El Jefe Maximo, who is doubtless now boring the hell out of Old Scratch himself with his endless palaver. “Freedom and democracy are long overdue in Cuba”, he said in a statement.

“Cuba continues the oppression of dissidents”. Though the paths they chose were different, Fidel too renounced with grace all his upper class comforts when he made a decision to work for the downtrodden.

Alonso-Rodriguez had gone by Alonso in the USA, dropping his mother’s surname for simplicity’s sake. Their Communist Party shows no signs of opening up greater political space despite agreeing with the United States to re-establish embassies and facilitate greater trade and investment.

“What can I say?”

Trump laid into the revolutionary’s record on human rights and pledged to help Cubans “finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty” after he takes over the world’s most powerful post in January.

“When you’ve done something for over 50 years, and nothing has really worked and nothing has changed, it’s time to try a different approach”, Alonso-Rodriguez said.