Obama urged not to send representative to Castro funeral

Two daughters of exile. Or at the least, it seems to bring it within closer reach.

Tears of exultation – and mourning – flowed worldwide Saturday as Fidel Castro’s foes and fans reacted to his death.

Yet friends overseas, such as the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, made Castro a sort of living icon, treating him as a mentor and symbol of independence from Washington. “Some of these people you’re talking about are people that have never had to live… near him, or anywhere around him or been impacted”, Rubio told CBS News on Saturday.

“Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro’s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people”, Obama said in his official statement on Whitehouse.gov.

The most recent Cuba Poll was taken in August.

Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed Castro as a “great leader” for the Cuban people and said China had lost “an intimate and honest friend”, according to a statement read on Chinese state TV.

A September Florida International University poll found that 56 percent of local Cuban Americans “strongly” or “mostly” favor reestablishing U.S. relations with Cuba and 63 percent don’t believe the United States embargo against Cuba should continue.

She admits that the children of exiles grapple with wanting to learn about their heritage while being respectful of their parents’ struggles. “He is a man who deserves respect”.

That’s why she believes in educating Cuban-Americans, while building bridges with folks in Cuba.

The Massachusetts Democrat has long pushed to normalize US and Cuba relations. Many said they recognize his death alone doesn’t mean immediate democracy or freedom for the communist island. The exemplary internationalism displayed by Cuba over decades – providing whatever they could and asking nothing in return – leads to the enthusiastic embrace of socialist Cuba and its leaders such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara throughout the world. Gonzalez also hasn’t visited. Castro grew up near Santiago and attended school there as a youth.

Castro himself was a 1944 graduate of the school.

In Queens, one of Castro’s many purported lovers from the late 1950s, Marita Lorenz, mourned him privately.

The Cuban revolution faced its most trying period in the 1990s when it was left politically and economically isolated.

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. Fidel Castro also maintained a steel grip at home, jailing dissidents and gays, controlling freedom of travel and expression and declaring virtually any activity outside his control to be illegitimate. In May, for the first time ever, a cruise ship from the United States docked in Havana Harbor, where 118 years earlier the sinking of the USS Maine catapulted Americans into Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain. The Ladies in White movement made a decision to stay home on “out of respect” for those who mourn Castro and to avoid being accused of committing any act of “provocation in the streets”, said the group’s leader, Berta Soler.

“He’s not a human being, he’s a monster”, she said. “It’s a celebration not of his death, but a celebration of the end of this image of pain and suffering”.

“They are celebrating but in a very peaceful way”, Fallat said of the demonstrators. “To the wall!” they chanted as members of deposed President Fulgencio Batista’s government were quickly tried and lined up before firing squads.

The offer is not intended as a gimmick to sell more calls and profit on Castro’s death, he said.