Rumor has it Castro is dead — once again

MIAMI — On Friday, the rumors heated up again for the third week in a row: Fidel Castro's death would be announced, first at 2 p.m., then at 4, then at 5.

For the past year, since the Cuban government said Castro had ceded power to brother Raul after intestinal surgery, rumors that Castro is on the brink of meeting his maker keep boiling over and dying down.

Friday, teary callers told Ninoska Perez, of Radio Mambi, they were sure this was it, and Perez, as usual, reminded, "The moment will come, but this is not the moment."

At Aaction Home Health in Hialeah, office workers were abuzz because somebody from Cuba called a colleague to say folks in Havana were taking to the streets in anticipation of the news. At the University of Miami, media-relations officers worked the phones in search of confirmation.

But again, none of the rumors seemed to be panning out.

For many, waiting for proof has become like the low-grade anxiety that comes when you're bracing for a hurricane that may or may not hit. Everyone knows whatever happens will be disruptive in some way.

The rumors also reached fever pitch last weekend. The media perked up and started another round of the confirmation game. Calls flooded Miami Mayor Manny Diaz's office. The University of Miami and its Cuba experts wound up on high alert. And the community started rumbling anew, parents reaching out to children, friends calling friends.

"Last Friday, when the rumors started again, my phone rang off the hook," said Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies. "It was everybody. Friends, family, the State Department. People went nuts."

Another false alarm.

For now, the older generation in particular is keeping a stiff upper lip, said Radio Mambi's Armando Perez Roura, a longtime Cuban radio personality who has been poised to break the news of Castro's demise for decades.

"This is definitely the calm before the storm," Perez Roura said. After all, he said, it was a younger, more recently arrived Cuban crowd that jumped the gun and swarmed Calle Ocho to celebrate Castro's death when news of his ceding power broke at the end of July last year.

"The rest of us have spent a lot of years in this process," Perez Roura said. "Waiting for something to happen, hearing rumors that never turn out to be true. We're not going to react until we know for sure."