Elian Gonzalez Mourns Death of Fidel Castro

NPR’s Greg Allen reports. “The Cuban people”, he added, “must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America”.

As I thought about that distinction, memories of my relatives long since dead came flashing back.

WOMAN: “I guess I shouldn’t be happy, because a person has died, but he separated my family”. It’s because of what it represents to all of us.

With most any negative, there’s a positive.

“Thousands of Cubans have been executed, thousands have been imprisoned, thousands more have fled and they prospered where ever they’ve gone, except in Cuba”. Many Cubans died on the ocean trip to South Florida. But both described his death as a potential turning point for Cuba, and both appeared to accept as fact that its prospects for freedom and prosperity are bound up with that of the United States.

Her father joined them a month later but returned to Cuba for the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, when a branch of US Army troops, Brigade 2506, tried to reclaim power from Castro under the instruction of the Central Intelligence Agency.

LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART: Let’s keep in mind the successes, the opportunities, the fact that what is inevitable – inevitable – is freedom for Cuba.

“Following the revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro brought significant political and social change to his country, overcoming not just the regime of General Fulgencio Batista but also the economic isolation forced upon Cuba in the years that followed”. A Fidel impersonator dressed in green military fatigues, chomping a cigar drew cheers with selfies as he made his way through the crowd. State radio and television were filled with non-stop tributes to Castro, playing hours of footage of his time in power and interviews with prominent Cubans affectionately remembering him.

But when you hear all of that, I only ask that you stop for a second, find a calm moment and think about your own family. “He opened doors for me when clinics in Argentina closed them, because nobody wanted (to deal with) the death of Maradona”, he said. We feel it. We – that’s who we are. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba. Well, this one lasted 57.

“Finally when I saw, ‘Oh it’s true, ‘ I was like, ‘I can’t believe it, ‘” she said. The Coast Guard has seen a sharp uptick recently in Cubans attempting to arrive in Florida by sea, with at least 7,411 Cubans attempting to migrate over the Florida Straits in the fiscal year that ended September 30 compared with 4,473 in the same timeframe last year.