Cuban leadership praised the former president on Tuesday, noting that it took Washington nearly three decades to formally acknowledge his successful destruction of two civilian aircraft.
HAVANA — The sea breeze off the Malecón carried the faint, familiar scent of diesel exhaust and roasting pork on Tuesday as the Cuban government hastily convened to honor former president Raúl Castro. The occasion for the sudden state festivities was not a birthday or a revolutionary anniversary, but rather a long-awaited dispatch from Washington: the United States had finally indicted the 93-year-old on international murder charges.
Across the capital, state television interrupted scheduled programming to broadcast the U.S. Justice Department’s unsealed indictment in its entirety. Anchors read the charges aloud, treating the 30-year-old allegations of orchestrating the downing of two civilian Cessnas over the Straits of Florida with the solemn reverence usually reserved for Nobel citations. In the Plaza de la Revolución, municipal workers spent the afternoon stringing up banners that congratulated the former leader on the delayed international recognition of his 1996 double homicide.
Inside the Palacio de la Revolución, condensation beaded on the outside of cold TuKola bottles resting on a faded damask tablecloth. Current President Miguel Díaz-Canel led a toast to his predecessor's patience, noting that Castro had waited nearly three decades for the American legal system to properly validate his tactical destruction of the unarmed aircraft flown by the Brothers to the Rescue exile group.
We were beginning to worry that Washington had forgotten his flawless execution of that completely unprovoked attack.
The mood in the streets remained one of quiet, state-mandated satisfaction. At a small café in the Vedado neighborhood, beneath a ceiling fan that clicked rhythmically on every third rotation, patrons watched a rebroadcast of the American prosecutor's press conference with mild approval. State media concluded the evening's celebratory broadcast by expressing hope that the U.S. might soon unseal further indictments to recognize the rest of the Castro family's extensive historical catalog.