Fidel Castro’s estranged sister mourns him in Miami

Carlos Portes during a meeting between Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an Iowa trade delegation in Havana earlier this year.

“I’m here because Fidel was a good friend to Ireland”, Adams said.

If the students had traveled to Cuba this week, they likely would have gotten a different experience because the Cuban government has declared nine days of mourning for Castro.

It was the first time that his remains were shown since his death Friday at age 90. “He did so in 2008”.

“Farewell, dear brother. Farewell, revolutionary”, he said.

Cubans have been paying their respects to their late former autocratic leader, Fidel Castro, at Revolution Square in Havana.

US President Barack Obama, who along with Raul Castro ended decades of enmity to restore diplomatic relations, did not attend the rally, sending an advisor and a diplomat without the status of a “presidential delegation”.

“I don’t believe that anything, for all intents and purposes, changes in Cuba”, he said.

Castro was with the South African people throughout the period of heightened repression by the apartheid regime and throughout the 30 year period of exile, underground armed struggle and worldwide isolation of the apartheid regime, right from the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959, said the ANC.

In Miami, where so many Cubans flocked in the past decades to escape Castro’s policies, Cuban-Americans celebrated his death with street parties throughout the weekend.

They chanted “long live the revolution!” and “Fidel!”

Signs read: “The Cuban Communist Party is the only legitimate heir of the legacy and authority of the commander in chief of the Cuban Revolution, comrade Fidel Castro”.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande declined to attend Cuba’s elaborate homage to Castro, who ruled the Caribbean island based on Marxist principles for almost half a century – in part by jailing dissenters.

“I heard they had an opening where you can go on a cultural exchange and so I signed up”, said New Yorker Emmanuel Aime, who plans to stay until Sunday. “Those hard-liners (in the U.S.) wound up having children here”.

“No hating, no more fighting – try to find the way that, at the end, Cuba could be free again”, she said. He also said many Cubans on the island are truly mourning Castro’s death.

“We continue to have some significant concerns about the way the Cuban government now operates, particularly with regard to protecting the basic human rights of the Cuban people”, he said.

Many mourners came on their own, but thousands of others were sent in groups by the communist government, which still employs about 80 percent of the working people in Cuba.

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

Carpenter Rene Mena, 58, said his mother had taken him out of his Havana home as a baby to see Castro arrive.