Day of joy for the exiles who fled Castro
World leaders expected for Havana funeral
FUNERAL preparations were under way in Cuba last night as the country readies itself for a gathering of world leaders not seen since the death of Nelson Mandela.
Nine days of national mourning have been declared to mark Castro’s death, at the age of 90. He is believed to have died at his home, in a military base on the outskirts of Havana. Castro is survived by his second wife, Dalia Soto del Valle, and, it is believed, nine children – although no one ever knew for sure.
Plaza de la Revolucion, scene of so many of his epic speeches, was a place of pilgrimage yesterday. Cubans were flocking to the historic square, some inconsolable, to pay their respects. In contrast, there was jubilation in Miami, Florida, as Cuban Americans who despised the Castros danced in the streets. Castro’s ashes will be taken across Cuba before a ceremony next Sunday in Santiago de Cuba, the second city. There is speculation that Barack Obama could attend the funeral – ending his presidency with a gesture sealing a relationship he has worked so hard to build. Castro’s Latin American alllies are certain to be there. Others who might go include Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president and China’s Xi Jinping.
The first that Cubans heard of Fidel Castro’s death was when his brother, Raul, appeared on television shortly after midnight on Saturday to announce the news, his voice shaking with emotion.
In Havana, people gathered around their radios as state broadcasters pumped out revolutionary anthems and recited the key achievements of their leader.
As the news that the 90-year-old had died at his home spread, bars and restaurants across the city began closing their doors.
Just 230 miles away in Little Havana, Miami, impromptu parties broke out, whooping and cheers ringing out under the night sky.
Castro had cast a long and foreboding shadow over Cuba’s 850,000-strong exiled community.
Thousands flooded on to the streets as they banged on pots, waved Cuban flags and chanted “Cuba libre!” Many were still in their pyjamas.
One man waved a large sign depicting a cartoon devil wreathed in flames, alongside the message: “Satan, Fidel is now yours. Give him what he deserves. Don’t let him rest in peace.”
Before long, a life-size plastic skeleton with a Cuban cigar in its mouth was bobbing to-and-fro above a sea of jubilant Cuban-Americans.
But for Cubans back home, the death of their former leader was met with a mixture of grief, shock and a deep uncertainty over what the new era might bring.
On Friday night, people danced and swigged rum as usual on the seafront, unaware that the dictator had died. When someone arrived at Havana’s Malecón docks to break the news to them, the nightclubs shut their doors and the crowds evaporated. Foreign tourists were asked to go back to their hotels as a mark of respect.
“The whole world will remember this man … he achieved things nobody else did,” said Duncy Fajardo, as he stood near Cuba’s National Hotel, which hosted both Ernest Hemingway and Frank Sinatra before falling to communist nationalisation in 1959.
According to a dissident Cuban newspaper, many initially thought the reports of their leader’s death were a hoax, Castro himself having once joked there were so many attempts on his life that “the day I die, no one will believe it”.
In Birán, a small town on the northeastern tip of the island where Castro was born, the family home was besieged by anxious locals asking whether the reports were true.
Those early doubts were dispersed only when a newsreader in a sombre suit appeared on state television and began reading out tributes from other Latin-American leaders.
His ashes will be transported across the island before a ceremony next Sunday in Santiago de Cuba, the second city, where Castro first attempted a revolt in 1953.
“He was the guide for our people,” said Mariela Alonso. “There will be no one else like him. We will feel his physical absence.”
By 7am, the streets were quiet as citizens prepared for nine days of national mourning. The only hive of activity was in the Cuban communist party headquarters, where a funeral committee began making arrangements for the cremation a week today. Until then, public activities and events will be cancelled and the Cuban flag will fly at half-mast. The Council of State said yesterday that state radio and television would “maintain informative, patriotic and historic programming”.
“Everyone feels the loss of this figure – this personality, this excellency, this man for all time,” said Wildy Rodriguez, who runs a hotel in Baracoa, the oldest town in Cuba.
He told The Sunday Telegraph: “There has never been – and never will be – anyone like him.”
In Florida, the celebrations went on late yesterday, the crowds so great that police had to block off the roads to traffic. “Cuba libre!” people cried. Cars honked their horns in solidarity.
“I want Fidel to be remembered as a tyrant who brought shame on the Cuban people,” said Jorge Luis Triana, who was 15 when he suffered the wrath of the Castro regime.
Feeling rebellious at school one day, he pulled out his pen and scrawled “Down with Cuba!” on the white strip of the national flag in his classroom.
The punishment was swift and unforgiving. “They threw me in jail. I was in a cell for six years,” he said. “They humiliated me, they beat me, they starved me.”
He said the government also banned him from leaving the country. It was only when his wife drew on her Spanish heritage to get them European passports that he was able to escape to America. In 2010, at the age of 41, Mr Triana started a new life in Miami.
More than three million people fled Castro’s regime after he came to power in 1959, hundreds of thousands seeking refuge across the Florida Straits in Miami. As a result, the southernmost point of the United States has come to be known as the northern edge of Latin America.
But last night, few kind words about the revolutionary leader were being uttered in Miami.
“I am shedding tears tonight, but they’re tears of joy,” said Armando Salguero, a columnist at The Miami
Herald. “Hell has a special place for Fidel Castro, and there’s one less vacancy in hell tonight.”
An 84-year-old woman, who said she had spent 54 years waiting for Castro’s demise, described it as “the happiest day of my life”.
Castro’s death, which has been hailed by critics as marking the end of 20th-century communism, also marked the end of a local tradition. On New Year’s Eve in Little Havana, dissidents would raise a glass and say a toast in Spanish – “Next year in Cuba” – wishing for Castro to be toppled. Yesterday was not the first time that Miami’s streets were filled with people celebrating Castro’s death – it had been falsely reported on many occasions. Now their wish has come true.
Castro’s communist rule divided his family just as deeply and bitterly as his own people. While his brother, Raul, stayed by Castro’s side to the end, his estranged sister, Juanita, branded the dictator a “monster” and fled to Florida.
Ms Castro said yesterday that she remained opposed to the dictatorship he had imposed on the island and would not return for his funeral.
Ms Castro, 83, defected to the US in
‘I’m shedding tears of joy: hell has a special place for Fidel Castro, and there’s one less vacancy there tonight’
1964 after sheltering opponents of the communist regime in her Havana home, and collaborating with the CIA, even as the intelligence agency plotted assassination attempts against her brother.
“In light of the bad rumours that said I was going to go to Cuba for the funeral, I want to clarify that I have never returned to the island, nor do I have plans to do so,” she said.
Castro’s only daughter, Aline Fernandez, joined hundreds of thousands of Cubans who fled to Miami, and she remains among her father’s harshest critics.
Even in Havana itself, a handful of dissidents were raising a champagne toast last night, according to one senior dissident.
“I think this is the first step to a great change,” said Eliecer Avila, the leader of the group Somos Mas. “I think that some were waiting for today with joy.”