Castro handover sparks Cuban celebrations in Miami

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Cuban exiles streamed into the streets of
Miami’s Little Havana, dancing and cheering to celebrate news
that Cuban President Fidel Castro had handed over power
temporarily for the first time due to surgery.

Later on Tuesday the euphoria turned to nervous waiting for
updates on the condition of Castro, viewed by many exiles as a
brutal dictator whose demise could usher in a new democratic
era for their homeland.

“We are seeing the end of this 50-year-old, almost
50-year-old, terrorist regime,” U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a
Miami Republican of Cuban descent, told Miami television
station WSVN. “It could be hours, it could be days, it could be
months, but it’s on the way out.”

Castro turned over power temporarily on Monday to his
younger brother and designated successor Raul Castro after
having surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding.

Diaz-Balart, whose family was once related to Castro by
marriage, said the Cuban leader was essentially a one-man
government and his brother Raul was unlikely to govern for long
because: “He doesn’t have the brain power that Fidel does.”

U.S. and Florida officials have long anticipated that
Castro’s death could prompt a chaotic exodus as boaters to head
to sea in mass numbers to visit or pick up relatives in their
homeland.

The U.S. Coast Guard was carefully monitoring developments,
Petty Officer Dana Warr said.

“We have contingency plans that are in place if anything
would happen,” Warr said, declining to elaborate.

Miami-Dade County opened its emergency operations center,
but calm had returned to the Miami streets that erupted in
jubilant celebration the night before.

AWASH IN FLAGS

Calle Ocho, the main street of the Spanish-speaking
neighborhood in Miami that is the heart of Castro’s exiled
opposition, had been awash in Cuban flags and dancing people
who had waited years, and in some cases decades, for Fidel
Castro to cede power.

“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.

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 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.”

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.”

(Additional reporting by Jim Loney in Miami)