Fidel Castro was a master of stagecraft until the end.
His death, announced Friday night, came on the 60th anniversary of the day when he, his brother Raul, Che Guevara and 79 other revolutionaries boarded a decrepit cabin cruiser in Mexico under the cover of darkness and headed to Cuba to resume their armed struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Most of the revolutionaries aboard the Granma were quickly killed after landing in Cuba. But the Castros and Guevara, who holed up in the Sierra Maestra, waged a guerrilla campaign that ousted Batista and propelled Fidel to power and gave him absolute control.
It is Castro's past as a revolutionary firebrand that will figure heavily in Cuba's plans to mark the passing of the man who loomed larger than life in Cuban politics for more than six decades and inspired passion _ both admiration and revulsion.
Although many Cuban exiles, who took to the streets of Miami late Friday and Saturday to celebrate the demise of the dictator, would have preferred a different, perhaps more violent end to Fidel Castro's life, his timing of his death was also impeccable.
He survived until to age 90 _ something he called "a whim of fate," rather than anything he was responsible for, and lived to see the special tributes and historical events that were carried out for an entire year leading up to his Aug. 13 birthday.
He even managed to say farewell to the nation during the Cuban Communist Party's VII Congress in April, when he addressed the gathering in a faltering voice: "Soon I will be like everyone else. We all face the same fate. ... This may be one of the last times I speak in this hall."
"It's a shame that Fidel died peacefully in a bed without being tried for all the crimes he committed against the Cuban people," Felix Rodriguez said Saturday in Miami. Rodriguez, a Bay of Pigs veteran, helped in the 1967 capture of Guevara, who was subsequently executed in Bolivia.
"Unfortunately, at this point, power has been consolidated by his brother. There won't be a big change in Cuba; I wish this had happened years ago. But it's the death of an evil man," Rodriguez said.
Castro also lived long enough to see the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba _ although he was lukewarm to the process.
Health permitting, Castro tried to stay politically engaged until the end. As recently as mid-November he met with Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang in Havana and in recent months received other world leaders.
Castro was to be cremated Saturday, according to his wishes, said Raul Castro, who announced his brother's death to the nation in a national TV broadcast around midnight.
The government declared nine days of mourning that began at 6 a.m. Saturday and will continue until noon Sunday when Castro's ashes will be buried at Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, "the heroic city" know as the cradle of the Cuban Revolution.
Many Cubans were unaware of Castro's passing at 10:39 p.m. until they awoke to the news Saturday morning.
"Santiago is sleeping. The majority of Santiagueros that woke up with hunger and fatigue didn't know about the death of Fidel Castro," said Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the dissdent group Union Patriotica de Cuba. "Besides, he has been thought to be dead so many times."
Ferrer said he feared more repression against dissidents.
As condolences poured into Cuba from world leaders, many evoked Castro's revolutionary past.
"He embodied the Cuban Revolution," said French President Francois Hollande.
His ashes will be placed in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana where Cubans will be able to pay their respects Monday and Tuesday, and oWednesday the ashes will begin a journey that along the same path of the 1959 Caravana de La Libertad when Castro and the revolutionaries marched in triumph from eastern Cuba into the capital.
But this time, the caravan will take Castro's remains back to where it all started.
The ashes will end up in Santiago de Cuba on Dec. 3 where a mass gathering is planned the Antonio Maceo Plaza. His ashes will be interred the next day at 7 a.m.
As news of Castro's death spread, reaction was more swift on social media that on the streets of Cuba.
"Many in Havana still don't know, the streets vacant, in my building ... silence," Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who directs the independent digital news site 14ymedio, commented on Twitter.
Charlie Serrano, a Chicago businessman who has been taking political and business groups to the island for the past 24 years, said it was a quiet Saturday morning in Havana, in contrast to the raw emotion on display in Miami.
"It was a typical Saturday morning, very calm. People were going about their business, but they weren't gathering in the streets. You could tell they were aware that something had happened," Serrano said by phone from Havana.
There was no music playing _ the usual backdrop of life in Havana _ and no light-hearted banter, he said.
Serrano saw off a group of American educators at the Havana airport Saturday. He said the mood was subdued but nothing out of the ordinary was going on. He said it appeared that the Cuban government was trying not to make Castro's death disruptive. "I think that is the way that Fidel Castro would have wanted it to happen."
Maria Ricardo, 17, of Tampa, Fla., returned on a charter flight Saturday morning after visiting her aunt on the island. She said the Miami Herald the streets in Cuba were quiet when she left.
She woke up to the news on the radio. "My aunt was crying uncontrollably; that's always been her president, " said Ricardo. "They played Castro's favorite songs, really sad music."
Many of the passengers arriving in Miami from Cuba didn't want to talk about Castro's death.
"We're not supposed to talk about this," one man said. "At the airport in Havana people were quiet and hushed. I found out by the taxi-cab driver who told me to keep my reaction to myself. We aren't allowed to speak our minds there, but just know that I am the happiest man alive."
Another passenger questioned the euphoria being expressed in Miami. "He is a human being. Why would we ever celebrate someone's death? No matter if they're your enemy?"
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(Monique O. Madan and Luisa Yanez of The Miami Hearald and Nora Gamez Torres and Alfonso Chardy of el Nuevo Herald contributed to this report.)
