The Day Fidel Castro died

Story By COLIN MURPHEY
When St. Mary Parish residents Marshall Guidry and Dr. Tom Kramer visited the decades-long isolated nation of Cuba recently with over a dozen other tourists from the area, they got a little more than they bargained for when they originally planned the trip.
After tensions between the United States and Cuba were eased recently by the Obama administration and travel restrictions were lifted, Guidry and Kramer, along with their wives and others from St. Mary Parish, planned a trip to the island nation to experience a glimpse of what life was like in a country long off limits to American travelers.
What they didn’t and couldn’t have known is that a historic event would befall the nation of Cuba while they were on their way on a cruise ship from Miami. What they encountered when they stepped off the cruise ship when it made landfall in Cuba was a nation in the midst of mourning a figure that changed the course of history forever.
And when they heard the news that former Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro had died, they didn’t know what to expect from their journey to a country long seen as a relic of the Cold War. Guidry said it was just before they departed that they heard the historic news.
“It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving,” Guidry said. “When we woke up the next morning we learned that Fidel Castro had passed away. It was an interesting aspect of the trip that we were going there during a historic time.”
Guidry and Kramer both said, despite the tumultuous events unfolding before their eyes, they were still able to gain an appreciation for what life was like for the average Cuban citizen regardless of the distraction of the country having lost a leader that was revered in Cuba and reviled by much of the rest of the world.
“It was a very interesting trip,” Guidry said. “The Cuban people were very nice and I would certainly hope that future governments would open up Cuba to foreign travelers and that there might be more trade because that would certainly help the Cuban people advance into a much better life situation. Havana and Key West are only 90 miles apart. They are close and yet so far. When you look at what we have here in the United States and what the people of Cuba have…it’s a lot less. I’m certainly optimistic that by opening up Cuba there will be more trade and the life of Cuban citizens will become better.”
For one of the St. Mary Parish visitors to Cuba, it was a return trip. Kramer traveled to Cuba in the late 1940s before the Castro era, before the revolution, before the Bay of Pigs, before the Iron Curtain, before the Cuban Missile Crisis and before Castro became the thorn in the side of every American President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kramer said Cuba in the 1940s compared to Cuba in 2016 was strikingly different.
“I was in Cuba in 1947 and that was before Fidel,” Kramer said. “All of the tour guides were astounded that I was there in 1947 and things have changed dramatically since then. It was a capitalistic attitude then and it’s a communist one now.”
Kramer said one of the most visible differences between Cuba in the 1940s and Cuba today was the unfortunate deterioration of the architecture. Kramer lamented that many of the classic Spanish-colonial style buildings he remembered as a teenager visiting Cuba were crumbling around them in 2016.
“It was outstanding, especially in Havana,” Kramer said. “And now, they are falling down. There’s no way they can ever restore all of those beautiful buildings that are in such disrepair. They are doing some restoration but, it’s very limited. There are still some grand buildings in Havana and it’s a beautiful and interesting city.”
Kramer and Guidry both said one of their primary motivations behind wanting to visit, until recently, one of the most isolated countries in the world was to see it before it potentially succumbs to Western influence, tourism and money. Both said they expect there to be significant changes in Cuba due to the easing of travel restrictions by the United States, but that they hoped the changes to be beneficial to the Cuban people.
As far as visiting during the mourning period for the country’s former leader, both Guidry and Kramer said the mood amongst the Cuban people was somber, but celebratory at the same time. They both witnessed people waiting for hours for the chance to see Castro’s casket to drive by only to be disappointed by delays in the funeral procession.
Both witnessed a people affected by the death of a figure that changed the course of history by cutting off much of the world and at the same time seemingly determined to open up to a world that had long forgotten them. For seasoned travelers Guidry and Kramer, both described the experience as one they hope other westerners take advantage of before the Cuba they experienced becomes something different.