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Cuban exiles dance in Miami over Castro news

Posted on: Tuesday, 1 August 2006, 01:22 CDT

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) - Beating on cooking pots and honking car horns, hundreds of Cuban exiles streamed into the streets of Miami's Little Havana to celebrate news that Cuban President Fidel Castro had handed over power.

Calle Ocho, the main street of the Spanish-speaking neighborhood in Miami that is the heart of Castro's exiled opposition, was awash in Cuban flags and dancing people who had waited years, and in some cases decades, for this moment. Fireworks exploded in parts of Miami.

Castro's announcement on Monday night that he was handing over power temporarily to his younger brother and designated successor Raul Castro while he underwent surgery was greeted by Cuban exiles in Miami as a signal of his imminent demise.

"I am elated but I am sad at the same time, because there are so many of us who could not be here to see this," said Ana Maria Lamar, referring to exiles who spent their lives fighting Castro and the thousands of Cuban rafters believed to have perished trying to flee the communist-ruled Caribbean island.

An estimated 650,000 people of Cuban descent make their homes in Miami, the Florida city remade by Cubans who left the island in waves following Castro's 1959 revolution.

Lamar, 62, said her late father fought at the Bay of Pigs in the 1961 U.S.-backed attempt to unseat Castro.

"He is celebrating in heaven," she said, tears in her eyes. She was wrapped in a red, white and blue Cuban flag and nearby were six of her relatives, representing three generations of family.

Cars streamed along Calle Ocho, drivers honking horns as passengers leaned out windows, waving flags. Young women in bikini tops popped up through the sunroofs of parading SUVs and couples danced on the beds of pickup trucks.

Police blocked off streets as a crowd of at least 500 people gathered outside the popular Little Havana eatery Versailles, where President Bush had breakfast on Monday when he denounced what he described as Castro's "tyrannical regime."

A group of bare-chested young men wearing life jackets and carrying paddles trotted along the street, a reminder of rafters trying to escape the island 90 miles south of the Florida Keys. A dapper man in a white suit, white fedora and red tie chanted: "Cuba, yes, Castro is dead."

'WAIT-AND-SEE'

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who left Cuba as a child, said in a statement she hoped the news signaled the end of Castro's power.

"Fidel Castro has only brought ruin and misery to Cuba so if he is incapacitated, even for a short period of time, it is a marvelous moment for the millions of Cubans who live under his iron fisted rule and oppressive state machinery." A Republican, she represents a Miami district.

While the Miami celebration was noisy and joyful, many of the revelers were skeptical, remembering dozens of previous times when rumors of Castro's demise spread like wildfire through the community.

"I think it's a joke. I hope it's true but I think it's a joke," said Lazaro Lorenzo, 43, who waved a beach towel bearing a map of the island and wore a T-shirt that said "Fidel Castro. Dictator. Terrorist."

Lorenzo said he came to Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when south Florida took in more than 100,000 people who fled after Castro temporarily opened the port of Mariel and told Cubans they could leave.

For some, the joy of contemplating the end of Castro's rule was tempered by fears a transition of power could be chaotic.

"It's going to be dangerous. There's going to be bloodshed," said Nelly Vazquez, 49, a Miami schoolteacher whose parents brought her to the United States when she was 3 years old. "That regime is evil. They murdered a lot of people."

Source: REUTERS

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