Miami's celebrations provoke rebukes from Cubans at home

[seafan]

Miami's celebrations provoke rebukes from Cubans at home

BY ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

August 2, 2006

HAVANA -- The joyous celebrations by Cuban-Americans in Miami following news of Fidel Castro's illness provoked reactions of disgust by many Cubans on the island Wednesday.
"That's what you can expect from the type of trash that lives in the United States and cares nothing about this country," said Oralis Delgado, a homemaker.
"It shows the type of heart" they have, said Maria Antonia Figueroa, 88, who described herself as an old Castro collaborator.

News that Castro had ceded power to his brother Raul while he recovers from surgery quickly spread through Miami's Cuban-American community late Monday. Hundreds of anti-Castro exiles in the Little Havana neighborhood danced and paraded down the central street, Calle Ocho, waving from convertibles and banging pots out of their car windows.
Footage of the street party aired on Cuba's state television and was reported in Juventud Rebelde, the Communist youth newspaper, which had an editorial headlined "The gusanera of Miami gives shame," using a colloquial term meaning "nest of worms."

Many in Havana saw Miami's celebrations as an expression of violent revenge by Cuban exiles who may have lost property or been separated from their families.
Cuban officials also said they were bothered to see the reaction, as did analysts on "The Round Table," a nightly current events program on Cuban state television, which broadcast images of the celebration.

"It stirs the blood. It's one more reason to remain strong," Rogelio Polanco, editor of Juventud Rebelde, said on the program. He called on Cubans to unite behind the mission of the revolution and to keep from giving the United States any opening.

Lazaro Barredo, a journalist and National Assembly deputy, criticized those wishing for Castro's death as "bravuconadas," roughly meaning bullies.

snip

And now, the * brothers are licking their chops over potential *business deals* in Cuba, now that new oil fields have been discovered off Cuba's northern coast and the opportunities for *development* on the island.

Like vultures waiting to swoop in to tear at vulnerable flesh.