There was little immediate reaction Friday night among members of Los Angeles’ Cuban community to the death of former Cuban President Fidel Castro as many refused to speak out about the controversial Marxist leader.
The 90-year-old Cuban icon, the “commander in chief of the Cuban revolution” and the last of the Cold War leaders, died according to his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro.
Fidel Castro had been in ill health for years, and he gave up the presidential role in 2008 to his brother. Nevertheless, he continued having a major influence on the island nation some 90 miles south of the southern tip of the United States in Florida.
A call to perhaps one of the best known Cuban restaurants in Los Angeles, Versailles on Venice Boulevard near Culver City, elicited a refusal to be quoted. “The owner’s not here. He’ll be back Monday,” said the individual answering the telephone. The Venice Boulevard location is one of a number operated under the same name.
Despite the waning controversy of the Castro years and warming relations with the United States, the topic of Fidel Castro was still sensitive in the local Cuban community.
No other Cubans seemed anxious to comment. Responses from other restaurants included, “The owner doesn’t like to get involved in that stuff,” and “I doubt anybody wants to talk about that.”
It was difficult to locate other Cuban exiles or supporters after the late Friday night announcement during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Despite 11 American presidents acting with varying degrees of antagonism towards Fidel Castro, the revolutionary managed to stay in power once his revolution succeeded in 1959. Castro grew close to the Soviet Union after ousting a long-time dictator, and was at the center of the world’s attention during what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the U.S. faced off against the Soviet Union over Russian rockets located in Cuba close to the American homeland.
He also fought off an ill-fated attempt by Cuban exiles to oust him from power in the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco supported by the United States.
Castro was famed for being a friend and fellow revolutionary with Argentine Marxist Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Stories abounded through the years of efforts to assassinate the Cuban leader, including one failed effort to place poison in his shoes that would supposedly be fatal once the substance was absorbed into his skin. It was never clear how many of those stories were true and how many were made up.
The U.S. CIA in 2005 concluded Castro had Parkinson’s Disease. It wasn’t known if that may have led to his death.
— Staff and wire reports