A call and a shrug

News of the resignation of Fidel Castro quickly made its way Tuesday to the more than 2,000 Cubans who live in the Triangle, many of whom got early morning phone calls from Florida and Cuba.

Most said they were happy to hear that the dictator's nearly half-century of rule was over. But they weren't ready to celebrate. Among their greatest fears is that the name of the leader will change but conditions in the country will not.

'God bless America'

Gonzalo Fernández, who lives in Raleigh, got a call from friends over breakfast Tuesday morning: Castro had stepped down.

He shrugged. Until Castro is dead, he says, little will change.

"I think that he will remain in power behind the scenes," said Fernández, 80.

Fernández says it still turns his stomach to think of Castro's rise to power. He and his wife were so afraid of a nuclear war in the early 1960s that they kept a suitcase packed with emergency supplies for their children and made a plan to hide out in the countryside.

Before he left in 1966, he says, the Communist government destroyed his accounting business, froze his bank accounts and took his home, his car and his possessions.

His three young children arrived in the United States unable to speak English. Now, he says, one is a doctor, one is a lawyer and another has an MBA.

"God bless America," he said. "If you hear anyone complaining about the United States, you tell them to talk to me or my wife."

Saw it coming

Louis A. Perez Jr. took Tuesday's news as a predictable and necessary turn in a tale he's been following closely.

His grandfather emigrated to the United States from Cuba in the 1920s. Now a history professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and the director of the university's Institute for the Study of the Americas, Perez has followed Castro's op-ed pieces and pronouncements in the last year with an academic's eye for the subtext.

"If you read them carefully, they all make allusions or references to the decision that was made this morning," said Perez, whose most recent book was last year's "To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society."

Perez said he presumes that Castro's brother Raul Castro will be elected president. But that does not make Tuesday's announcement any less of a watershed moment for many Cuban exiles, he said.

"I think the key then turns on who occupies that position of first vice president, because that's going to be a generational change," he said.

A glimmer of hope

Annie Anton's parents told her stories of the beautiful country where they were born, about the relatives she never met. They fled Cuba in 1961, before she was born. They lived on welfare in Miami, like many Cubans, forced to start over from scratch. They could not return home even for the funerals of their parents.

Now, it is too late for her family to return to Cuba. But Anton, a computer science professor at N.C. State University, said the news Tuesday gave her a glimmer of hope for the Cubans who never escaped.

"For 49 years, Cubans have been denied basic human rights and the opportunity to live in a free society," Anton said. "Any transition offers some hope for a transition to democracy, so that's good. But it's still just a hope. That's why you're not seeing Cubans dancing in the streets."

'Until he's six feet under'

Joe Ovies' grandfather suffers from Alzheimer's now. But in brief moments of clarity, he tells Ovies he wishes they could go back to Cuba one day, where he would show Ovies his heritage.

A co-host for 850 AM Sports Radio's morning drive show, Ovies grew up in Florida but moved to Raleigh midway through high school. Ovies' father was 8 when he left Cuba in 1961 with his parents.

Ovies said Tuesday's news was not the announcement his his family has been most eager to hear. "Until Castro dies, until he's six feet under, it's not going to change U.S. policy," said Ovies, who thinks a visit to his family's native country would prove bittersweet. "I'm aware of the history, but I'm part of a whole new generation that was born in this country, that will never be affected like their parents and their grandparents were."