The last time I left Cuba, I did so like I usually do — unsure about the island's future and whether the decaying place that time forgot would finally get its long awaited face-lift through an infusion of investment and tourism dollars.

Somehow, someway, Cuba has a way of resisting change, defying the world even when all signs — millennials on social media, the opening of private bars and clubs — point to a new Cuba.

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I waited that April 2015 at the José Martí International Airport in La Habana, after several days with Texas farmers and others who had come ready to sell cotton, cattle and just about anything else Texas grows and cultivates, including airlines eager to take to carry passengers from Dallas in the morning to old La Habana in the afternoon, just in time for mojitos.

As usual, the Texans left weary, some wondering whether perhaps Cuba was still all talk, smoke and mirrors, a country of 11.5 million people that deep down was not yet ready to do business with the country against which it once stood on the brink of nuclear war, the old enemy just 90 miles away. The Castros were still in power.

Fidel Castro had been out of power for nearly 10 years, and his younger brother Raul had already made his mark on the island, changing the economic course of the nation and negotiating an end to the 50-year diplomatic standoff with the U.S. via an executive order from President Barack Obama

The old comandante, Fidel Castro, died Friday at age 90, having defied successive U.S. presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush, and a U.S. blockade that Castro used to prop himself up as a leader, blaming the broken promises of the 1959 revolution on U.S. policy.

I remember the palpable disappointment on the faces of the Texans the evening before their departure. But also their determination, a sense that somehow Cuba shares a different destiny with Texas than it does with Florida, where Cuba's mostly bitter diaspora makes it that much more challenging to restore ties. The Cubans talk fondly about Texas, sharing an admiration for the state's independence, its cowboys and the similarities between the Lone Star flag and Cuba's — things the Texans love to hear and toy with.

"We're destined to do business together," one of the farmers told me over dinner that previous night. "We'll get there, someday. For now, we're still in Fidel's shadow."

Perhaps, they were right. Since that trip, the Texas-Cuba thaw continues. In January, the Texas Cuba Trade Alliance is holding a four-hour workshop on trade with Cuba at the Texas Capitol, said the alliance's Cynthia Thomas of TriStrategies Dimensions.

In these uncertain times, with a new administration taking office in January, Thomas remains hopeful. Next week, the first commercial flight between Texas and Havana will take place, with United Airlines poised to take off from Houston to Havana, she said.

1 / 14In this May 15, 1955 file photo, Fidel Castro (C) and his close and faithful collaborators Hayde Santamaria (R) and Melba Hernandez, leave the Presidio Modelo prison in Havana, after being pardoned under an amnesty by the then President Fulgencio Batista, in the case of their 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks.(AFP / Getty Images) 2 / 14In this Sept. 1973 file photo, Cuban president Fidel Castro (R) looks at a rifle during a visit in North Vietnam during the Vietnam war. (AFP / Getty Images) 3 / 14In this 1970s file photo, Cuban Prime Secretary of the Cuban Communist party and President of the State Council Fidel Castro addresses the crowd. (AFP / Getty Images) 4 / 14In this Jan. 26, 1976 photo, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and wife Margaret and Cuban President Fidel Castro listen to the national anthems of both countries after the Trudeaus arrived in Havana, Cuba.(Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press via AP) 5 / 14In this Jan. 26, 1976 photo, Margaret Trudeau smiles as Cuban President Fidel Castro holds her youngest son Michel after the Trudeaus arrived in Havana, Cuba. (Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press via AP) 6 / 14In this Jan. 26, 1976 photo, thousands of Cuban people line the streets in Havava, Cuba to greet Prime Minister Pierre Eliott Trudeau as he drives through the city with Commander in chief Fidel Castro and president of Cuba Osvaldo Dorticos. (Fred Chartrand / The Canadian press via AP) 7 / 14In this Jan. 4, 1988 file photo, Cuban president Fidel Castro delivers a speech during the 30th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. (AFP / Getty Images) 8 / 14In this Aug. 31, 1986 file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro (C), flanked by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (L), arrives in Harare, for the 8th non-aligned summit in Zimbabwe. (AFP / Getty Images) 9 / 14In this Jan. 8, 1989 file photo, a white dove lands on Cuban president Fidel Castro's shoulder as he delivers a speech to Cuban youth at a ceremony to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in Havana. (AFP / Getty Images) 10 / 14In this July 12, 1997 photo, Raul Castro, from left, Ramiro Valdes, and Fidel Castro stand as Aleida Guevara, Ernesto "Che" Guevara's daughter, speaks in front of Guevara's remains during a ceremony to pay tribute to the fame guerrilla, in Havana, Cuba. (Jose Goitia / The Canadian Press via AP) 11 / 14In this Oct. 20, 1998 file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro gestures as he answers reporters' questions during his visit at the Roman amphitheatre of Merida. (AFP / Getty Images) 12 / 14In this Aug. 24, 1998, file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) looks at a sword given to him by members of the Dominican Revolutionary Movement in Santo Domingo, on his last day of a three-day official visit to the Dominican Republic. The sword was originally used in the war of the Cuban independence against Spain. (AFP / Getty Images) 13 / 14In this Oct. 28, 1998 file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) speaks with the president of the Spanish region of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, at the Palacio de la Revolucion in Havana during Fraga's six-day official visit to Cuba. (AFP / Getty Images) 14 / 14In this July 26, 2006 file photo, Cuban President Fidel Castro visits the city of Holguin during the inauguration of an electricity generating plant, as part of the ceremony marking the 53rd anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks by rebels led by Castro. (AFP / Getty Images)

"For sure, businesses will be watching the early days of the Trump administration for any reversals of President Obama's executive orders," Thomas said. "However, President-elect Trump's administration is going to be very busy with health care and undocumented immigrants in the early part of his administration. And President Obama said last week in Peru that President-elect Trump had assured him that he would not reverse his executive orders on Cuba."

For now, I imagined myself returning and grinned. Regardless of your political views on Cuba, whether you celebrate or mourn Castro's passing, the island is one of the most haunting, beautiful, mysterious places I've visited. The more I saw, the more questions without answers. And the more I yearned for Cuba.

Corchado is the former Mexico bureau chief for The Dallas Morning News and currently is co-director of the Borderlands Program at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Twitter: @ajcorchado