ONE MAPLEWOODIAN REMEMBERS LIFE UNDER CASTRO

Bob and Carmen Perez

When word of Fidel Castro's death broke on Saturday, Carmen Perez thought back to life in Cuba during her teen years.  

And how glad, and scared, she was to leave.

The Maplewood resident, who lived in Cuba until she was 20, said memories included relatives being jailed after the Bay of Pigs for no reason at all. 

"It was horrible, it was horrible," she told Maplewoodian.com about life under the dictator just hours after his death. "I remember my father and my uncle were put in jail. They were just people in the community and they thought that they should be put away."

Perez said she was able to leave the country after 20 years to go to Spain, then to the United States where she initially lived with two cousins in Westchester County, N.Y.   

"They would take people by trucks and take them out of town," she recalled about the post-Bay of Pigs treatment. 

"When you are 20 years old and you leave parents behind, you don't know if you will see them," Perez explained. "It is a very, very sad story. Those who think Castro was a great thing, they are wrong." She said of Fidel and his brother, Raul, "They were butchers and dictators who would kill anyone."

She later added, "I don't celebrate anyone dying, it reminds us what we went through. In a way, I am glad because of what our parents went through and their hope was to go back to Cuba. Families were destroyed, I had relatives all over the world. We hope that things will change"

Her husband, Angel "Bob" Perez -- a former Township Committee candidate -- is the son of two former Cuban citizens who emigrated to the United States. He said many of his family and friends were harmed by Castro's actions.

"I hardly know of any Cuban family that was not torn apart by this butcher," he said of Castro. "He destroyed the culture, the fabric of a nation and families. I don't know of anyone who can say a good word about that man."