When Raul Castro announced the end of his family dynasty’s power in Cuba, Horacio Llerena was glad to see him go.
Llerena, a contractor in New Jersey, escaped the communist island as part of a mass migration of Cubans, known as the Mariel boat lift in 1980, when Raul’s brother Fidel Castro was at the helm.
“We are happy. We were waiting for that, “said Llerena, 61, who played with friends at Jose Marti Park in Union City. The park contains a bronze bust of the 19th century Cuban poet and patriot, who lived in exile in New York from 1880 until he returned to fight against Spanish imperialism in Cuba, where he died in 1895.
Like Marti, Llerena originally moved from Havana to New York City. Llerena has lived in New Jersey since 1982, he said. Named Havana on the Hudson, Union City and Western New York, it has been home to a small Cuban community since the 1940s.
Although Raul Castro (89) stepped down from his leadership of the ruling Communist Party on the island, little will change on the island, Llerena said.
“Everyone who deals with the Communist Party must go,” Llerena said. “All the remaining people alive have to pay for all the crimes of the past 61 years.”
After serving two terms as president of Cuba, Raul Castro retired in 2018, allowing his successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, to take over the presidency. In 2008, Raul Castro takes over the leadership of Cuba from his older brother Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who has ruled the island since overthrowing Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Fidel Castro passed away in 2016.
Although Diaz-Canel is part of a younger generation of politicians on the island, he serves on behalf of Raul Castro and is unlikely to make major changes to the island, other Cuban American critics told The Post.
“They talk well, but I see no difference,” said Tony, 52, a first-generation Cuban American who runs La Pola, his family’s Cuban restaurant in West New York. In 2018, a critic of the Food Network calls the restaurant’s Cuban sandwich the best in the US, causing a feud with other Cuban communities in Florida.
“It’s just one to pass the torch to another,” Tony said of the handover of power to the island.
Diaz-Canel is likely to be elected Secretary-General of the Communist Party during this weekend’s party congress. Both the presidency and the head of the party are traditionally held by the same leader in the country.