A week after the death of Fidel Castro, the jubilant mood among Cuban exiles in Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood is slowly giving way to one of measured contemplation, along with some apprehension about what will happen to their homeland when Donald Trump becomes US president in January.



News of Castro’s demise sparked a giant street party along Calle Ocho that by Wednesday night had morphed into a rally attended by hundreds at the Bay of Pigs monument, demanding a restoration of human rights and political reforms in Cuba.

The shifting emotions reflect what community leaders say is a renewed hope for change on the island among Miami’s almost one million Cuban Americans – the majority of whom left the country because of their opposition to Castro’s regime –sparked by Castro’s death and Trump’s election in the same month.

“Fidel Castro was more than just a symbol. His physical disappearance will be far-reaching, past the celebratory atmosphere in south Florida and of so many who see his death as a burial of the worst of Cuba,” said Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation.

“It will unleash the shackles from those within the regime of a different generation who want change, who want to project Cuba to be part of a group of nations that function. I’m hopeful that the Cuban exile community sees our role as helping Cubans on the island, to empower them and be the architects of change for Cuba.”

Trump followed a well-trodden path as he courted the votes of Miami’s Cuban Americans this year, with a photo-op with a cafecito and pastelitos at Calle Ocho’s famous Versailles Bakery and a platform at the Bay of Pigs museum in Little Havana upon which to deliver a fiery denunciation of Barack Obama for thawing relations with the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, who formally succeeded his brother as leader in 2008.

“If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the US as a whole, I will terminate deal,” Trump tweeted two days after Fidel Castro’s death. But with other priorities now consuming the attention of Trump’s transition team, Cubans in south Florida wonder if the president-elect really intends to deliver on the pledges he has made to rein in Obama’s new accord.

Guillermo Grenier, professor of sociology at Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute, is sceptical. “When Trump began to see that the Cuban vote might be significant in Florida, he did what every other politician since 1959 has done, come to the Cuban community and said, ‘Next year we’re going to do something about the Castro government, next year we’re going to be hardline,” he said. “There’s no strong consensus Trump knows what to do about Cuba. There’s no compelling reason to mess around with Cuba and I don’t think Trump will do anything about Cuba.”

Trump has yet to appoint a secretary of state who will help steer the direction of the new era in Washington-Havana relations, and aside from appointing Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of a political action committee opposed to Cuban engagement, to his transition team for the treasury department, the president-elect has offered few clues.

And there is a generational divide among Cuban Americans on the rapprochement with their former homeland, Grenier said. “Younger Cubans, the new arrivals, the second-generation Cubans born in the US that voted for Trump, almost all are for engagement. You still have that older generation, a smaller part of the community today but nevertheless wealthier and more politically connected and influential, the same old guard saying we should have a reeling back … The ones who have the megaphone are the ones that are going to be heard.”

Nevertheless, Trump’s hard line seemed to resonate with many of Florida’s 1.2 million Cuban Americans in last month’s presidential election, with 54% voting for him, according to Pew Research, up from the 47% who backed Mitt Romney in 2012.

Among them was Juan Fiol, a Miami-based realtor who was born in the US to Cuban immigrant parents, who believes the majority of his community backed Trump because they thought he would stand up to Raúl Castro.

“That’s the reason we vote heavily for the Republicans, not Democrats,” he said. “Cubans know what a socialist is. The Democratic party is a socialist party; they have the same thinking and style.”

Mas was optimistic about future relations between the US and Cuba. “Some of the elements of what Obama did will continue under President Trump, there will be renewed emphasis on human rights and a potential renegotiation based on the experience of the last two years, which has seen little to no investment from US companies in Cuba,” he said.

“Cuba has to move, it has to make reforms, it has to do things to entice investment and free enterprise. [But] the death of Fidel Castro has lifted a dark veil. People here have hope and expectation for a better future. Now the work begins.”