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For the nearly five decades Fidel Castro ruled this country, he was a daily presence in Cubans’ lives. His speeches echoed on their televisions and his stern rules shaped almost every aspect of their existence.
They woke up Saturday and found out he was gone.
A numbness has set in here since. Few Cubans seemed to believe the death of Castro at age 90 will bring immediate transformation of their country, the only one-party state in the Western Hemisphere. After all, poor health forced Castro aside in 2006, and the system he created has carried on without him.
But Castro’s death nonetheless represents a psychological break with Cuba’s past and the figure who has dominated it for three generations. There is enormous, built-up pressure, especially among younger generations, for a faster pace of change that brings new freedoms and better living standards.
Now the Cuban government must manage those expectations at a moment of new uncertainty in the island’s all-important relationship with the United States. The Communist government has tentatively embraced improved relations with President Barack Obama‘s administration and a new surge of American visitors. Many here fear that President-elect Donald Trump will roll back the changes.
Among the Cubans who want change to come faster, and who are tired of the political divisions and tensions that Castro represented, there was a hushed sense of relief Saturday at the news of his death.
«People here are so tired. He destroyed this place,» said a university engineering student who was walking home Saturday morning from the market in Havana’s central Vedado neighborhood. He began trembling when a reporter told him that Castro had died, and that this time it wasn’t a mere rumor.
«I think you have to look at both the good and the bad, but there was more bad,» said the student, who declined to give his name, saying it would land him in trouble at school.
As reports of the Cuban leader’s death spread Saturday morning in the capital, there were no signs of unrest but, perhaps just as tellingly, not much spontaneous mourning either. Cubans went on with their lives in a world that is very much Castro’s creation: They went shopping at government stores, waited in government hospitals and tuned in to (or turned off) round-the-clock Castro tributes on government television.
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