Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday and Rep. Pete King said, "the world is a better place" because of his death.
"No person of good will should mourn the death of Fidel Castro or make any attempt to romanticize him," King said in a statement released Saturday.
"Castro was an evil dictator who carried out a reign of terror against his own Cuban people and attempted to subvert democracies throughout Latin America," he said.
Many Cuban-Americans are taking to the streets of Little Havana in Miami to celebrate the news of the Cuban dictators passing.
Cubans fled the island to Miami, Tampa, New Jersey and elsewhere after Castro took power in 1959 as many believed they would not be truly free under Castro and his communist regime.
According to AP, thousands left behind their possessions, loved ones, and hard-earned educations and businesses, traveling to the U.S. by plane, boat or raft.
Many Cubans died on the ocean trip to South Florida and many never returned to see their childhood homes, their neighborhoods, their playgrounds, their businesses, their cousins and aunts and uncles, because Castro was still in power.
King added that the Cuban dictator "denied its people the most basic human rights and subjected them to brutality, imprisonment and death."
"The world is a better place because of Fidel Castro's death," King said.