HAVANA (AP) – Music fell silent, weddings were canceled and people wept in the streets Saturday as Cubans faced their first day without the leader who steered their island to both greater social equality and years of economic ruin.
Across a hushed capital, dozens of Cubans said they felt genuine pain at the death of Fidel Castro, whose words and image had filled schoolbooks, airwaves and front pages since before many were born. And in private conversations, they expressed hope that Castro’s passing will allow Cuba to move faster toward a more open, prosperous future under his younger brother and successor, President Raul Castro.
Both brothers led bands of bearded rebels out of the eastern Sierra Maestra mountains to create a communist government 90 miles from the United States. But since taking over from his ailing brother in 2006, the 85-year-old Raul Castro has allowed an explosion of private enterprise and, last year, restored diplomatic relations with Washington.
“Raul wants the country to advance, to do business with the whole world, even the United States,” said Belkis Bejarano, a 65-year-old homemaker in central Havana. “Raul wants to do business, that’s it. Fidel was still holed up in the Sierra Maestra.”
In his twilight years Fidel Castro largely refrained from offering his opinions publicly on domestic issues, lending tacit backing to his brother’s free-market reforms. But the older Castro surged back onto the public stage twice this year – critiquing President Barack Obama’s historic March visit to Cuba and proclaiming in April that communism was “a great step forward in the fight against colonialism and its inseparable companion, imperialism.”