Kathy Chacon is 30 and moved to Tampa from Cuba 20 years ago. She has not lost her ethnic pride. On the back of her white Mazda is the window decal that proclaims: “Cubano 100%.”

Inside Dany’s Cubano Pizza restaurant on North Habana Avenue, Chacon voices her own theories on the day’s developments out of Havana: “I think he’s dead.”

She’s talking about Fidel Castro, whose ailing health has been the grist of rumors among Cubans in the U.S. for months, if not years. Today’s announcement that the dictator is stepping down after holding power in the island nation for nearly 50 years doesn’t change her mind.

“Every time they show him on television, it’s the same old video,” she says.

It’s the one that shows Castro bouncing around in a sweatsuit, looking spry for the camera. The video was made a while ago to show that he was in good health when rumors about him being near death were flying about.

With Castro’s brother, Raul, now in power, Chacon says the country is set for a change.

“We don’t like Raul at all,” she says, “He doesn’t have the guts to be president.” She says Raul Castro lacks his brother’s firm hand to keep the masses under control.

“People want to be free,” she says, and now’s the chance for Cuban nationals to travel back to Cuba and, along with those living there, effect change.

“There’s going to be another revolution,” she says.

This is the opportunity that has not presented itself for a half-century, she says. People were afraid of Fidel Castro, who silenced any notion of political change.

“People there don’t want to talk,” she says. “They can be arrested or be dead.”

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