“The government in Cuba will still repress and throw into jail anyone who opposes the Castro regime,” said Blanca Gonzalez, 65, who moved to the United States 13 years ago and whose son, Normando Hernandez, spent seven years in a Cuban prison for, she said, “practicing independent journalism.” He was freed in 2011.
Many Cuban exiles here have always held an ardent and implacable opposition to any hint of rapprochement with the Castro government. This week’s announcements from Mr. Obama and the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, have revived in stark fashion the resentments of these exiles, many of whom now feel utterly betrayed by the government of their adopted land.
“All Obama is doing is throwing a lifeline to the Castros so that they can continue crushing the people of Cuba,” said Roberto Delgado Ramos, 78, who said he was arrested twice, in 1960 and 1964, for “counterrevolutionary activities” and served a total of 12 years in prison. “The Castros are the ones who need to pay for the blood that they have spilled.”
Many of the demonstrators in José Martí Park — named after a Cuban hero of the island’s struggle for independence from Spain in the 19th century — took issue also with an exchange of prisoners between the two countries.
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