This article originally was published in 2010 during the 30th anniversary of the Mariel boatlift. Fidel Castro’s death at age 90 was announced on Saturday morning.

Cesar Odio was at his office at Miami City Hall one morning in late April 1980 when his desk phone rang.

A top federal immigration official was on the line asking Odio's help in locating a big enough place to hold dozens of Cuban refugees who had just arrived in Key West aboard a crowded boat.

It was one of the first boats laden with refugees boarding vessels in large numbers from the Cuban port of Mariel, 20 miles west of Havana.

It was also the beginning of the Mariel boatlift, which brought more than 125,000 Cuban refugees to U.S. shores between April and September 1980.

Thirty years after the biggest refugee exodus from Cuba, local officials who played key roles in the crisis recalled the historic events in interviews with El Nuevo Herald.

While many local officials and private citizens were involved in handling the refugee flood, only a handful came to be widely associated with the boatlift mainly because media attention then fell on them as veritable first responders to the unfolding crisis.

They are people like Odio, then an assistant city manager; Maurice Ferre, then Mayor of Miami; Merrett Stierheim, then Dade County manager and Sergio Pereira, an assistant county manager.

Private citizens whose names remain linked to the exodus include Lula Rodríguez, sister-in-law of then Hialeah mayor Raúl Martínez, who worked as a volunteer in the refugee processing camps, and Siro del Castillo, a human rights activist who helped Mariel refugees at the Krome detention center.

For all, Mariel was an unforgettable experience.

"It simply changed my life, " said Rodríguez, now doing consulting work on corporate communications in Miami.

She says that the plight of many Mariel refugees remains seared in her memory and that the exodus made her realize just how terrible the Castro regime was.

"I saw people who were taken from mental hospitals, " Rodríguez recalled in a recent interview. "Many of them were dazed. They asked questions like 'when is the doctor going to see me?' They were not even aware that they were in another country. That's when I realized the monstrosity of Fidel Castro."

While many top South Florida officials came to deal with Mariel, Odio is perhaps the one whose name is more closely linked to the event.

That's because he ran the Orange Bowl refugee shelter and the tent city under Interstate 95. To this day, thousands of Mariel refugees recognize Odio on the street and stop to thank him for his help.

When Odio talked to El Nuevo Herald recently at La Carreta restaurant in Key Biscayne, the waiter who took the order remembered Odio from the time he arrived in Miami as a Mariel refugee himself.

At the time, Odio was a young official, recently hired as assistant city manager during Ferre's administration. Odio had been in that position for four months when Mariel erupted.

It was his baptism by fire.

The boatlift exploded in Odio's life during one morning in late April 1980 when the first wave of boats began unloading refugees at Key West.

The federal immigration official who called Odio was desperate to find out where the refugees could be held while they awaited processing for formal admission into the United States.

"The call came just before lunch, " Odio recalled. "Immigration called and said 'we have a problem.' "

Odio said the immigration official told him that many Cuban refugees were coming aboard boats and that authorities did not have a big enough space to hold them. He advised that they be taken to the Manuel Artime Community Center in Little Havana, named after the civilian leader of the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

"I picked that place because it was in Little Havana and the refugees were Cuban and their relatives probably lived nearby, " Odio explained. "I went there to receive the refugees and from that moment my life changed. I worked literally 24 hours a day on the issue."

When Odio arrived at Artime, a crowd had gathered outside -- mostly relatives of the arriving refugees. The large number of relatives calmed his fears that the refugee wave would swamp city resources.

But Odio's initial optimism faded when he saw some of the passengers on the first boats.

"It was an example of what Fidel Castro was sending us, " Odio said. "Criminals and crazies, who had no families here. I began to worry."

As more boats arrived, Artime was swamped.

"We immediately started looking for another place, " Odio said.

He and his county counterpart, Pereira, got together and Pereira moved the refugees to the grounds of the Dade County Youth Fair in west Miami-Dade.

"We responded admirably despite having a 10 percent increase in the population in just 31 days, " Pereira recalled.

Ferre, then Miami's mayor, telephoned the White House and asked for an appointment with then-President Jimmy Carter.

Ferre was told Vice President Walter Mondale would receive him.

The next morning, Ferre was on a plane to the nation's capital.

"I sat for over an hour waiting for the vice president who was meeting with senior officials on Mariel in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, " Ferre said.

When the meeting broke up, Mondale approached Ferre and told him a National Security Council aide would see him instead.

"My question to federal officials was 'what are you guys going to do?' " Ferre recalled.

U.S. officials told Ferre they were prepared to stop the exodus by preventing exiles from leaving Florida for Mariel to pick up relatives.

Ferre said he urged federal officials to use caution, and argued in favor of admitting the Mariel refugees.

"I said 'you have to be very careful, ' " Ferre said. "And I also said, 'I think you ought to let these people in.' "

Meanwhile, back in Miami, local officials were growing alarmed because the Carter Administration did not seem to be reacting forcefully.

"The federal government was totally unprepared, " Stierheim said recently. "As a result, local governments really had to step in and relieve the problem."

While Stierheim remains upset about the federal response, he praised the reaction of the Cuban exiles. "The community showered us with tons of donations in supplies for the arriving refugees, " he said.

Though the days of the boatlift were "very dark indeed, " in the end "our county emerged stronger from the experience."

Stierheim and Ferre said Miami and Miami-Dade County worked closely together to deal with the exodus. Both remembered setting up a city-county executive crisis committee on which various officials worked together to respond to the exodus.

"We met periodically to assess the situation and needs, " Stierheim said.

Local officials received substantial help from Cuban exiles, particularly young Cuban-Americans eager to welcome the refugees.

Among the young volunteers was Rodríguez, a University of Miami sociology student who later became a senior State Department official under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Rodríguez served at some of the main refugee processing sites including Opa-locka Airport and Krome.

At Opa-locka, she was assigned to interview arriving refugees and gather basic information from them.

She had a lot of empathy toward the arriving refugees because she herself had fled Cuba with her sister and brother under the Pedro Pan program that brought 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban children to the U.S. mainland 50 years ago.

She was also hoping to see her mother, who had stayed behind in Cuba, among the arrivals. She never did. Her mother died in Cuba last year.

Her most memorable moment came when a young boy sneezed as she interviewed him and his relatives.

"I said 'Jesús, ' to the boy, which in Cuba meant 'bless you' after someone sneezes, and the boy turned to me and said, all serious, 'My name is not Jesús, it's Carlos, ' " Rodríguez recalled. "Then the mother reminded him about how back in Cuba they used to kneel and pray at night and he was not supposed to talk about it.

"That stayed with me because it shed light on the oppression and fear people in Cuba suffered under the regime."

After Opa-locka, Rodríguez went to work for the Public Health Service, which established a clinic to check arriving refugees. By the time the exodus wound down, Rodríguez had become director of the PHS clinic at Krome.

A closed Cold War missile basis, Krome was reopened as a processing and detention center as Mariel unfolded. Siro del Castillo became Krome camp commander at some point working for the State Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"After 30 years, the legacy of Mariel is everywhere in the Cuban community in the United States in all fields, economic, cultural, social, " Del Castillo said recently.

"Also, today there is no more talk of the "Marielitos" as a separate and distinct class of Cuban refugees. Today they are assimilated into society, like all immigrant groups in the past. They are doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers, fully integrated."

As more and more refugees arrived, it became obvious that a big place was needed to hold them.

On May 2, the Orange Bowl stadium opened as a temporary refugee shelter. Refugees housed there were bused in from Key West and then to Opa-locka Airport where immigration officials formally processed them, releasing those who had relatives.

By then it was clear the exodus was unstoppable, that it was going to continue for weeks or months. It went on until Sept. 26, when the boatlift officially ended.

In July, Miami began emptying the Orange Bowl of refugees. The city formally shut down the stadium as a refugee shelter on Aug. 10 to make way for football season.

Many of the refugees were then relocated to the tent city under I-95, where Odio became a fixture in media interviews.

Odio said the I-95 tent city was a deliberate effort to send a message to the rest of the nation that Miami needed help.

The site opened on July 29, days before the Orange Bowl was vacated.

Eventually, unsponsored refugees were taken to other sites, including Krome, as well as military bases and prisons elsewhere in the country.

Mariel was traumatic for South Florida, Odio said -- but it also prepared the community to deal more efficiently with future crises, including the rafter exodus of 1994.

On balance, Odio and other former officials said, Miami and Miami-Dade benefited from Mariel because the majority of the refugees went on to become successful citizens.

"Mariel was very bad in the beginning, but it was very good in the end, " Ferre summed up. "The vast majority of these people were honest, decent, hard working, industrious people . . . who are now doctors, bankers, entrepreneurs and who really uplifted the community."</s>Fidel Castro died, and Cuban Miami did what it does in times of community celebration: It poured onto the streets of Little Havana — and Hialeah, and Kendall — to honk horns, bang pans, and set off more than a few fireworks, saved for exactly the sort of unexpected special occasion that proved worthy of their detonation.

The scene across Miami-Dade County, the cradle of the Cuban exile community, was one of pure, raw emotion. This time, after decades of false alarms, Castro’s death was real.

“I wish my dad was here to see this,” 27-year-old Abraham Quintero cried just before 2 a.m. Saturday.

Wearing an “I love Hialeah” T-shirt, he stood on West 49th Street and Ludlam Road, where police quickly set up watch posts to make sure impromptu revelers stayed safe.

Passing cars honked incessantly. People waved huge Cuban flags. Parents carried their children and puppies. A few people appeared clad in pajamas and, in one case, flamingo slippers, jolted out of bed — and out of their homes — by the late-night news.

Shortly after midnight, Cuban leader Raúl Castro announced on state television, his voice trembling, that his older brother had died at 10:29 p.m.

The streets in Havana, where a nine-day mourning period was announced, appeared to remain quiet. Not so in Miami, the city across the Florida Straits shaped by exiles who fled Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Calle Ocho was completely shut down to traffic to accommodate the elated crowds gathered at Versailles Cuban restaurant, the iconic exile hangout, to cheer and wave signs — no matter how unseemly it might be to revel in an old man’s death.

Some even yelled profanities about Castro.

“ ,” they chanted outside Versailles. Fidel, tyrant, take your brother. There was also a variant: “ ” (Raul, tyrant, go with your brother).

Someone outside the restaurant brought a portable karaoke system, and the crowd sang Cuban star Willy Chirino’s exile anthem, “ ” (Our day is coming), as the scent of long-saved Cuban cigars burned at last.

People were still popping champagne bottles in the middle of the street after 4 a.m.

Only about 20 people milled outside Versailles’ window right before 1 a.m. “ !” drivers hollered from their cars. The few onlookers explained the news to passersby — and to a few confused, straggling tourists still dressed in clubbing attire.

About an hour later, the crowd had swelled to hundreds, including Venezuelans, Colombians and Puerto Ricans who said they came in solidarity. The mood was festive, with periodic outbursts of anger at Raúl Castro.

“One down, now comes the other,” yelled Enrique Rodriguez, 58, to cheers. “He can go to hell just like his brother.”

Barely half an hour after the news broke , several street sellers had parked on the sidewalk selling everything from flags to beaded necklaces in Cuba’s colors. The Cuban flags went very quickly: Tony Erst, one of the sellers, said he was sold out of 100 Cuban flags with car clips within 20 minutes.

On the outskirts of the rowdy crowd, Vivian Trigo, 57, stood quietly with a yellowed, framed photo of her parents. She came to Miami from Cuba in 1961, when she was 2 years old.

“They passed away before they could see this day,” she said. “I wish they could be here, but I know they are. And they can rest in peace now that the devil is gone.”

After a first weak attempts to start singing the national anthem by older people in the crowd, a woman got a megaphone and led the crowd in the first two stanzas of . Many in the crowd had pulled up the lyrics on their phones.

An apparent march, destination unclear, got under way on foot along westbound Southwest Eighth Street shortly before 3:30 a.m. At least one couple danced salsa in the middle of the street, surrounded by a crowd.

Carlos Lopez, 40, brought his 12-year-old daughter, Tiffany, to witness history. In Miami, it felt like the sort of moment people would recall for years to come: Remember where you were when Fidel died?

“We are not celebrating one man’s death, but the death of an ideology,” Lopez said. “We are celebrating that little piece of liberty we got back today.”

He hugged his daughter tight: “She’ll tell her grandchildren about this one day.”

Victor Perez-Aubreu, 21, came out with four friends to join the action. Little will change on the island immediately, he predicted, but the wee hours of Saturday were for celebrating.

“I don’t think this means anything will change tomorrow,” he said. “But there’s an emotional excitement to this.”

“The head of the snake is gone,” said 20-year-old Sergio Morales, who came to Miami from Cuba with his parents and younger brother in 2003. He waved a Cuban flag.

So many reporters descended on Versailles that Miami police had to designate an area for a spokesman to give interviews. Media choppers swirled overhead.

Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, who was born in Cuba, held court by the restaurant entrance, surrounded by microphones. He outlined how the city recalled officers to work, and posited that perhaps the Cuban government waited until late on a Friday night to announce Castro’s death to avoid outbursts on the island.

Across Miami-Dade, police deployed to protect spontaneous demonstrations, including at Southwest 87th Avenue and Bird Road, by a La Carreta Cuban restaurant. All local TV stations — in English and Spanish — cut into regular programming to provide live special coverage.

The county’s Cuban-born mayor, Carlos Gimenez, told WPLG-ABC 10 he learned the news via text message from Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine.

“I said, ‘Are you sure?’” Gimenez asked, recalling the many times over the years that Castro’s supposedly imminent death had been rumored.

The mayor said he telephoned his 94-year-old father in Miami — who told him, tonight, he’d sleep a little more soundly.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican who left Cuba when she was 8 years old, said she was “snoring” when the news broke.

“I had not heard any rumors,” she said. “But all of us have had our press releases ready for some time!”

She cast Castro’s death not as a moment of joy but as a “new opportunity for Raúl Castro to listen to the winds of change.”

“This is the moment that so many in our community have been waiting for since I can remember, since I was a child,” said U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican whose parents fled Cuba. “Everyone’s been waiting for this moment because they believed it would be the beginning of the end of the nightmare, and I think that’s exactly what this is: the opening of a door to a brighter future.”

Castro’s death comes during the transition of President-elect Donald Trump, who pledged as a candidate to undo President Barack Obama’s policy renewing diplomatic relations and pursuing closer ties with Cuba.

In an odd historical coincidence that did not go unnoticed among some exiles, Castro died 17 years to the day a 5-year-old boy named Elián González was rescued off Florida’s coast, also on Thanksgiving weekend.

Contemplating the revelry from the parking lot of a Latin Café in Hialeah was 80-year-old Elisa Martin, who fled Cuba in 1962, leaving behind her father and cousins. She seemed bewildered, eyes wide at the unfolding scene.

“I feel the worst for the people still living in Cuba,” she said. “He’s done so many bad things.”

Her son, Dan Martin, a 46-year-old engineer who was born in Miami, watched with amazement.

“I find it hard to be believe. We’ve been out here so many times when it wasn’t true and this time it is,” he said. “I have so many family members who never lived to see this day.”

Oscar Gomez, who turned 18 on Thursday, considered the street party in Hialeah “the biggest celebration ever.” “What else could I ask for?”

Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, who was born in Cuba, predicted the demonstrations would “continue all day.”

“I can’t say I am unhappy,” he acknowledged. “This is something we have been waiting for for a long time.”

Even a steady rain did nothing to turn away the crowd. If anything, the crowd delighted in it, dancing under umbrellas in the downpour.

“This is one step closer to me being able to go back to my country,” said 49-year-old Eduardo Blasto. “I’ve been waiting for this for 49 years.”

Miami Herald staff writers David J. Neal and Carli Teproff contributed to this report.</s>The death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro prompted celebrations among the country's exiles in Miami, and expressions of sorrow from some world leaders.

Within half an hour of the Cuban government's announcement of the death of the 90-year-old revolutionary leader, cheers were heard in Miami's Little Havana. Thousands of people banged pots, waved Cuban flags and whooped in jubilation. "Cuba si! Castro no!" they chanted, while others screamed "Cuba libre!"

"Feels weird," said Gabriel Morales, a 40-year-old financial executive in Miami, whose parents left Cuba after Castro came to power.

"Been waiting to hear this news all my life. Seems unreal," Morales said in a text message to an AP reporter.

However, Castro was mourned by some present and former national leaders.

"Fidel Castro in the 20th century did everything possible to destroy the colonial system, to establish cooperative relations," former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.

"Fidel survived and strengthened the country during the most severe U.S. blockade, while there was enormous pressure on him, and still led his country out of the blockade on the road of independent development."

Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the president of El Salvador, said he felt "deep sorrow ... of my friend and eternal companion, Commander Fidel Castro Ruz."

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted that "Fidel Castro was a friend of Mexico, promoting bilateral relations based on respect, dialogue and solidarity."

"India mourns the loss of a great friend," Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi said on Twitter.

The country's president, Pranab Mukherjee tweeted: "Heartfelt condolences on sad demise of Cuba's revolutionary leader, former president & friend of India, Fidel Castro."

Peter Hain, a former member of the British Cabinet and anti-apartheid campaigner, tempered praise for Castro with criticism of some aspects of his long rule.

"Although responsible for indefensible human rights and free-speech abuses, Castro created a society of unparalleled access to free health, education and equal opportunity despite an economically throttling USA siege," Hain said. "His troops inflicted the first defeat on South Africa's troops in Angola in 1988, a vital turning point in the struggle against apartheid."

A statement from the Spanish government hailed Castro as "a figure of enormous historical importance."

"As a son of Spaniards, former president Castro always maintained close relations with Spain and showed great affection for his family and cultural ties. For this reason Spain especially shares the grief of Cuba's government and authorities," the government statement said.</s>The leftist government of El Salvador is expressing "eternal gratitude" to Castro and the Cuban people for help "in the most difficult times." That's apparently a reference to Cuba's support of the guerrilla bands battling a U.S. backed, military-dominated government in the 1980s.

The government statement issued Saturday says Castro's "example will live forever in our struggles and will flower in the noble ideas of new generations."

Castro stepped down from the presidency provisionally in 2006 due to a severe illness, and left office permanently two years later.

He was succeeded by his younger brother Raul, who announced Fidel's death on state TV.

Within half an hour of the Cuban government's official announcement that former President Fidel Castro had died, Miami's Little Havana teemed with life — and cheers.

Thousands of people banged pots, waved Cuban flags and whooped in jubilation on Calle Ocho, the heart of the Cuban exile community in Florida. Honking and strains of salsa music from car stereos echoed against stucco buildings, and fireworks lit up the humid night sky.

Police blocked off streets leading to Cafe Versailles, the quintessential Cuban American hotspot where strong Cuban coffee was as common as a harsh words about Fidel Castro.

Castro has cast a shadow over Miami for decades, and in many ways, his policy and his power have shaped the city and its inhabitants, many of whom fled from his socialist rule.

The nightly news had started as usual on Cuban state television when suddenly something changed.

President Raul Castro appeared, seated before a desk in military uniform and delivered news: His brother Fidel Castro had died, nearly 58 years after leading a rebel army to a victory that led to one of the globe's most durable socialist states.

The president said his brother's remains would be cremated on Saturday and news about tributes would follow.

The death of Cuba's Fidel Castro has caught many people in Havana by surprise in the wee hours of the morning.</s>Blind to Cuban history, and blinkered by his late father’s fairy tales about Fidel Castro, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement on the death of the Cuban dictator was an embarrassment of international proportions.

He ignored the brutal truth about the man, dancing around it like a clown in a parade dodging horse droppings.

Today he is likely searching for his tattered Che Guevara T-shirt to wear in nostalgic homage.

“It was with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest-serving president,” Trudeau said. “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.

“A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.

“While a controversial figure,” said Trudeau, “both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante.’” For a supposed world leader, this is revisionist history at its worst, and therefore shameful.

Perhaps our prime minister should read the Washington Post, and a piece regarding the 13 facts that, in a just world, would be “etched on Castro’s tombstone, and highlighted in every obituary, as a fitting metaphor for someone who used firing squads to murder thousands of his own people.” Among them, Castro turned his island nation into a Communist outpost of the Soviet Union, and almost caused a nuclear conflagration during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Google it.

He forced almost 20% of his people into exile, leading to thousands losing their lives at sea while trying to make it to the safety of the Florida coast in crude boats.

He sponsored terrorism at every opportunity, and aligned himself with some of the worst dictators on the planet.

He condoned torture, and executions without trial.

The education system Trudeau lauded was actually a fraud, and was based on indoctrination as opposed to learning.

Castro built prisons at a rate that rivaled Stalin, and filled them to the brim with political prisoners and run-of-the-mill dissenters.

He persecuted gays and attempted to end religion, all while outlawing free enterprise and labour unions.

Yet Justin Trudeau eulogizes Castro as if he were benign, and some harmless old coot who ran out of time at the age of 90.

“I know my father was very proud to call (Castro) a friend, and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away,” Trudeau wrote in his statement.

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro, (and) we join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of a remarkable leader.” This is so naïve that it defies credulity, yet these are nonetheless the precise words Trudeau put out.

One suspects that not “all” Canadians are mourning Castro’s death, nor remembering him as a “remarkable leader.” If “remarkable” means despotic and murderous then fine.

But that is not the definition Trudeau wants used.

It makes him look like a fool, and justifiably so.</s>FORMER president Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule, has died aged 90.

Castro’s reign over the island-nation 90 miles from Florida was marked by the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling US trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died eight years after ill health forced him to formally hand power over to his younger brother Raul, who announced his death late on Friday.

With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10.29pm local time. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Toward victory, always!”

Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana’s Miramar neighbourhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died.

“Fidel? Fidel?” he said as he slapped his head with his hand in shock. “That’s not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn’t seem true.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. “We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard.”

Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, aged 32, the youngest leader in Latin America.

For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.

His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.

“Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving the island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.

He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with US President Barack Obama on December 17 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence.

Fidel Castro Ruz was born on August 13 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting workers for US sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.

Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.

Fidel turned his trial defence into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring: “History will absolve me.”</s>SAN DIEGO – Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, issued a strongly worded statement today on the death of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

 “Fidel Castro was a tyrant, murderer, liar, and evil despot. History will remember him as nothing more. He murdered his own citizens, imprisoned those who disagreed with him and wrought inconceivable misery on the people of his country for nearly 6 decades,” Issa said.

 “His death does not deserve to be mourned. While the dictator has died, the repressive regime he created endures. It is my hope that his death will mark the beginning of a new era of hope, freedom, and peace for the people of Cuba.

 “We have much work to do, but the people of Cuba should know that the United States stands at the ready to help further our common mission of

 eradicating communism and oppression wherever we find it. The irony of his death on Black Friday, the most capitalist day of the year, should also serve

 as a reminder that capitalism and freedom always win.”

 Issa, whose district also includes part of Orange County, is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

 Castro died on Friday at the age of 90. He ceded power to his brother Raul a decade ago.</s>"During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends -- bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity," Obama said, highlighting his efforts to mend US-Cuba relations during the course of his presidency.

"We know that this moment fills Cubans -- in Cuba and in the United States- - with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation," the statement said. "History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."

The President added, "Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro's family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America."

Shortly after Obama released his statement on Castro's death, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio responded via Twitter criticizing the President's comments.

"President Obama issued a pathetic statement on death of dictator #FidelCastro with no mention of thousands he killed & imprisoned. #Cuba," Rubio's tweet said. President Obama issued a pathetic statement on death of dictator #FidelCastro with no mention of thousands he killed & imprisoned. #Cuba — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 26, 2016 Obama made a historic trip to Cuba in March as the first US president to visit the country since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. While in Havana, Obama told Raul Castro the Cuban embargo would end at a press conference with the Cuban leader, but that didn't stop Fidel Castro from criticizing the trip. Obama's visit in an article published in the Cuban communist party newspaper. "We don't need the empire to give us anything," Castro wrote. Obama's visit in an article published in the Cuban communist party newspaper. "We don't need the empire to give us anything," Castro wrote. Fidel Castro slammed Obama's visit in an article published in the Cuban communist party newspaper. "We don't need the empire to give us anything," Castro wrote. The trip was part of a number of Obama administration initiatives to reopen economic and diplomatic ties between the two nations. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote an op-ed for Politico and said the trip was a signal to political prisoners in Cuba that "the world has forgotten about you." Castro's death was announced Friday night. He was 90 years old. The funeral is set for December 4, after nine days of mourning.</s>Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died Friday, state-run Cuban Television said. He was 90.

Castro had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006.

The bearded Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and ruled Cuba for 49 years with a mix of charisma and iron will, creating a one-party state and becoming a central figure in the Cold War.

He was demonized by the United States and its allies but admired by many leftists around the world, especially socialist revolutionaries in Latin America and Africa.

Transforming Cuba from a playground for rich Americans into a symbol of resistance to Washington, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents in power.

He fended off a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 as well as countless assassination attempts.

His alliance with Moscow helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a 13-day showdown with the United States that brought the world the closest it has been to nuclear war.

Wearing green military fatigues and chomping on cigars for many of his years in power, Castro was famous for long, fist-pounding speeches filled with blistering rhetoric, often aimed at the United States.

At home, he swept away capitalism and won support for bringing schools and hospitals to the poor. But he also created legions of enemies and critics, concentrated among Cuban exiles in Miami who fled his rule and saw him as a ruthless tyrant.

In the end it was not the efforts of Washington and Cuban exiles nor the collapse of Soviet communism that ended his rule. Instead, illness forced him to cede power to his younger brother Raul Castro, provisionally in 2006 and definitively in 2008.

Although Raul Castro always glorified his older brother, he has changed Cuba since taking over by introducing market-style economic reforms and agreeing with the United States in December to re-establish diplomatic ties and end decades of hostility.

Six weeks later, Fidel Castro offered only lukewarm support for the deal, raising questions about whether he approved of ending hostilities with his longtime enemy.

In his final years, Fidel Castro no longer held leadership posts. He wrote newspaper commentaries on world affairs and occasionally met with foreign leaders but he lived in semi-seclusion.

His death — which would once have thrown a question mark over Cuba’s future — seems unlikely to trigger a crisis as Raul Castro, 85, is firmly ensconced in power.</s>(CNN) Fidel Castro, the Cuban despot who famously proclaimed after his arrest in a failed coup attempt that history would absolve him, has died aged 90.

At the end, an elderly and infirm Castro was a whisper of the Marxist firebrand whose iron will and passionate determination bent the arc of destiny.

"There are few individuals in the 20th century who had a more profound impact on a single country than Fidel Castro had in Cuba," Robert Pastor, a former national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, told CNN in 2012.

"He reshaped Cuba in his image, for both bad and good," said Pastor, who died in 2014. "Cuba will be a different place because he lived and he died."

Castro lived long enough to see a historic thaw in relations between Cuba and the United States. The two nations reestablished diplomatic relations in July 2015 and President Barack Obama visited the island earlier this year.

Cuban President Raul Castro -- who took over from his ailing brother more than eight years earlier -- announced the breakthrough to the nation, but observers noted Fidel's silence on the matter.

Castro's stage was a small island nation 90 miles from the underbelly of the United States, but he commanded worldwide attention.

"He was a historic figure way out of proportion to the national base in which he operated," said noted Cuba scholar Louis A. Perez Jr., author of more than 10 books on the island and its history.

"Cuba hadn't counted for much in the scale of politics and history until Castro," said Wayne Smith, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 1979 to 1982.

Castro became famous enough that he could be identified by only one name. A mention of "Fidel" left little doubt who was being talked about.

Castro and the road to power

It was a bearded 32-year-old Castro and a small band of rough-looking revolutionaries who overthrew an unpopular dictator in 1959 and rode their jeeps and tanks into Havana, the nation's capital.

They were met by thousands upon thousands of Cubans fed up with the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and who believed in Castro's promise of democracy and an end to repression.

That promise would soon be betrayed, though, and Castro held on to power for 47 years, until an intestinal illness that required several surgeries forced him to temporarily relinquish his duties to younger brother Raul in July 2006. Castro resigned as president in February 2008 and Raul took over permanently.

One Castro or another has ruled Cuba over a period that spans seven decades and 11 U.S. presidents. Fidel Castro outlived six of those presidents including Cold War warriors John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

At the height of the Cold War, Castro used a blend of charisma and repression to install the first and only Communist government in the Western Hemisphere, less than 100 miles from the United States.

Cuba and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations on May 8, 1960, further eroding the relationship with the United States. Castro, who had long blamed many of Cuba's ills on American influence and resented the U.S. role in hemispheric politics, quickly intensified cooperation with the Soviet Union, which began sending large subsidies.

"Fidel Castro came to power with a conviction that he was going to have a major revolution in Cuba, that he was going to stay in power indefinitely, that he was going to fight American imperialism and that he needed a 'daddy' and his 'daddy' was the Soviet Union," said Jaime Suchlicki, the director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

In doing so, Castro defied a hostile U.S. policy that sought to topple him with a punishing trade embargo that started in 1962 and continued for the rest of his life.

"He taunted, antagonized and irritated the United States for more than a half-century," said Dan Erikson, a senior adviser for Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. State Department and author of "The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States and the Next Revolution."

Castro also survived numerous assassination attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency and anti-Castro exiles in the early 1960s. He took delight in pointing out how none of them succeeded, not even the plot that called for explosives to be placed in the ubiquitous cigars he later would quit smoking for health reasons.

"I have never been afraid of death," Castro said in 2002. "I have never been concerned about death."

Until his last breath, Castro held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union disintegrated and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was a bankrupt idea whose time had passed.

"The most vulnerable part of his persona as a politician is precisely his continued defense of a totalitarian model that is the main cause of the hardships, the misery and the unhappiness of the Cuban people," said Elizardo Sanchez, a human rights advocate and critic of the Castro regime.

But Castro's defenders in Cuba point to what they see as social progress, including racial integration, universal education and health care. Instead of blaming an inept socialist system, they fault the U.S. embargo for the country's economic woes.

"What Fidel achieved in the social order of this country has not been achieved by any poor nation, and even by many rich countries, despite being submitted to enormous pressures," said Jose Ramon Fernandez, a former Cuban vice president.

Castro's political staying power was a source of puzzling consternation and bitter frustration for Cuban exiles, who never imagined he would rule so long.

"We came here with a round-trip ticket ... because we thought the revolution was going to last days," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who came to Florida as a child and went on to become the first Cuban-American elected to Congress. "And the days turned into weeks, and the weeks to months, and the months to years."

Castro occasionally allowed disenchanted Cubans to leave, with most going to the United States. More than 260,000 Cubans left in a U.S.-organized airlift between 1965 and 1973. In 1980, Castro let another 125,000 leave in the chaotic Mariel Boatlift. Among them were criminals released from Cuban jails who brought a violent crime wave to Florida.

At other times, desperate Cubans fled the island nation in makeshift boats across the treacherous Straits of Florida. Thousands died from drowning or exposure to the brutal Caribbean sun.

The center of the exile community is Miami, where the Cuban American National Foundation became a powerful lobbying group courted by U.S. politicians. For nearly five decades, pressure and political donations from the exile community have thwarted any efforts to lift the embargo.

Castro was born August 13, 1926, in Oriente province in eastern Cuba. His father, Angel, was a wealthy landowner originally from Spain. His mother, Lina, had been a maid to Angel's first wife.

Educated in private Jesuit schools, Castro went on to earn a law degree from the University of Havana in 1950 and became a practicing attorney, offering free legal services to the poor.

In 1952, at the age of 25, he ran for the Cuban congress. But just before the election, the government was overthrown by Batista, who established the dictatorship that put Castro on the road to revolution.

On July 26, 1953, Castro led a group of about 150 rebels who attacked the Moncada military barracks in Santiago in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Batista. Most of the attackers were killed. Castro and a handful of others were captured.

The attack made him famous throughout Cuba, but it also earned him a 15-year prison sentence.

At his sentencing, Castro told the court, "Condemn me, it doesn't matter. History will absolve me."

He was released in 1955 as part of an amnesty for political prisoners and lived in exile in the United States and Mexico, where he organized a guerrilla group with brother Raul and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentine doctor-turned-revolutionary. They named themselves the July 26 Movement, after the date of the failed Moncada attack.

In 1956, Castro and a few dozen rebels headed for Cuba aboard an old yacht called the "Granma." Off course and long overdue, they beached the craft off the coast of Oriente province.

Batista's soldiers were waiting for them, and, again, most of Castro's followers were killed.

The Castro brothers, Guevara and a handful of other survivors fled into the Sierra Maestra mountains along the nation's southeastern coast, where they waged their guerrilla campaign against Batista.
Cuban state television announces that former President Fidel Castro has died at age 90.