Waco: Local Cuban reacts to Castro’s death

Authorities there have arrested her three times in recent years in connection with her avant-garde theater. Delgado-Pontani described her father as “well connected” and suspects one of his associates warned him to leave the country. “But also, people enjoyed the fact that he basically gave the middle finger to the United States”.

“With Fidel Castro there is, yes, absolutely a brutal dictator but you can not remove from his history the things that made Cubans like him in the first place”, she continued. She said it was important for Americans to know that those in Miami don’t represent the rest of the world.

“I’ve never met anybody who fled from Cuba who would defend him”, Carlson added.

On the first day of a week-long series of remembrances for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, thousands of people Monday walked past a memorial on the same spot where he delivered many legendary speeches.

Trudeau was unable to meet with Fidel Castro, however, in what many at the time considered a snub, dismissing the Cuban government’s claim that Fidel was too fragile for the meeting. And people are becoming a lot more aware of Cuba as a country, and Cuba as an impoverished country.

U.S. President Barack Obama has not issued a statement on whether or not he will attend Fidel’s funeral but it is most likely that he will not. Even most of the courageous dissidents who stood up to the Castro regime argued that hard-line US policy was counterproductive, doing more to shore up the system than weaken it.

Castro’s younger brother, 85-year-old Raul Castro, took control in 2006, and later negotiated with Obama to restore diplomatic relations.

Castro took power in a 1959 coup – one animated by nationalism, not Marxism – that ousted a dictatorial regime seen as a US puppet.

Church World Service’s Lancaster, Pennsylvania, office resettled 224 Cubans in 2015. According to Ross, that count has already surpassed 250 this year.

Wednesday morning’s inaugural American Airlines flight between Charlotte and Havana remains a go – but not for city and county officials, and about 20 others who were scheduled to be onboard.

“It was Fidel who fought for the human rights for black Cubans”, said Riddle, political director of the Michigan Chapter of the National Action Network.

Alain Martinez, his wife and their 16-year-old son resettled in Lancaster in February 2015.

“I don’t think only in Cuba, but I think everybody in the world is horrified”, she says. “He separated families. If you disagreed with him, he shot you in the head”.

Castro also granted asylum to Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted in 1977 in the death of state Trooper Werner Foerster during a 1973 gunfight on the New Jersey Turnpike.

But the Cuban leadership no longer had a choice.

“If the United States continues to limit trade (with Cuba), and the European Union, China and Russian Federation continue to expand trade, there will be a smaller piece of cake left for USA companies”, said Jose Maria Vinales Camallonga, director of International Operations at Lupicinio, a Spanish law firm that represents large corporations in their Cuba dealings.