2nd day of homage to Fidel Castro to end with mammoth rally

The Cubans were excited upon learning the group was from America, Miriam said.

HAVANA (AP) – Regional leaders and tens of thousands of Cubans jammed the Plaza of the Revolution on Tuesday night, celebrating Fidel Castro on the spot where he delivered fiery speeches to mammoth crowds in the years after he seized power.

US President-elect Donald Trump gestures to the news media as he appears outside the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, US, November 20, 2016. When Batista was defeated three years later, Castro arrived in Cuba’s capital city promising constitutional reform and a democratic way of life.

Fidel Castro’s death symbolizes the passing of an era and accelerates hope that the winds of change that are already in place in Cuba will continue to deepen. “We have a very complicated history with Cuba”, Rhodes explained during a discussion of his work for Obama in the Atlantic.

“Knowing that they never knew if I was going to return”, he said.

Whether Raul Castro will use his brother’s death as an opportunity to change that remains to be seen.

The Fidel Castro that Sam Riddle and many other African-Americans admired was not the revolutionary dictator who plunged Cuba into economic ruin and held the island nation in an iron grip. FILE – In this January 7, 1959 file photo, rebel leader Fidel Castro, left, draws a laugh from the crowd in Colon, Cuba as he and his caravan make a stop on their way to the capital.

The first USA commercial flight to Cuba’s capital in over 50 years landed on Monday morning, just days after the death of Fidel Castro.

Wright said that numerous decisions made by the USA government at the time were attempts to stop the revolution in Cuba from spreading to other countries in Latin American.

“For those that lost their brothers, their sisters, their mothers, their fathers to the firing squad, or were sentenced to long terms in prison, those people are unforgiving”, he said.

“My dad was my dad, but he couldn’t give me what (Castro) gave me”, said Lourdes Rivera, a 66-year-old retired civil servant who sat on a curb and cried as she waited in line. Cuba also irritated America with the Bay of Pigs defeat in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and its armed forces acting as proxies for the USSR in sending troops to bolster Marxist governments in Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Travel to Cuba is permitted only for one of 12 reasons, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Both Huerta and Portes make trips to the island on a regular basis.

Flags outside official buildings are being flown at half-staff to honor Castro, who died Friday at age 90.