MIAMI--Cuban-Americans poured into the streets of Miami's Little Havana on Saturday to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, while leaders of Florida's Cuban emigre community portrayed his passing as a hopeful sign for reform in their homeland.
Thousands of revelers turned out in force on the streets of the city's Cuban neighbourhood, waving flags, setting off fireworks and banging on pots to mark the death of a man who many scorned as a dictator. But the crowd included many people too young to remember Castro in his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, and many of them sounded more pragmatic than ideological when speaking about his death at the age of 90.
Vendors selling "Cuba Libre" flags and T-shirts set up shop on nearly every street corner, as rows of cars, many of them blaring horns, flooded the streets. At the Versailles Restaurant, long a center of the city's exile community, the wait for a table at lunchtime was more than an hour and a half.
"This is the happiest day of my life, Cubans are finally free!" said Orlidia Montells, 84, who said she had waited for Castro to die for more than 50 years.
But Julie Peñate, a 15-year-old student who was at the Versailles with her family, spoke of Castro's death in terms of the future. She said it was an opportunity to build on the warmer relations established under the Obama adminstration.
"I think now we have a more civilized bond and we can come together and do something greater," Peñate said.
Hugo Ravelo, an 83-year-old former casino employee, said he hoped change would come to the Caribbean island, but he was not sure how much would happen. "The other one is still there," he said, referring to Cuban President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother.
Ric Herrero, executive director of Cuba Now, was more optimistic. He believes Castro's death should free his brother to push ahead with measures that the more hard-line "Commandante" had long opposed.
Cuba Now is a nonpartisan advocacy group that played a pivotal role in persuading President Barrack Obama to re-establish diplomatic relations with the communist nation. "We know that Fidel opposed normalization with the United States and put the brakes on many of the economic reforms that his younger brother tried to implement," Herrero said. "This opens up space for Raul."
