Well. The day is here.

Finally, after 22 years of my life, I'm hearing the words. After 22 years of washing my mouth with soap after saying his name, Miami is celebrating. After over 5 decades of living in exile, my grandparents are going to bed with the knowledge that the man responsible for driving them from their homeland now lies dead somewhere in the heart of Havana.

That's right. Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, the man responsible for an untold number of murders and imprisonments of his own countrymen, the face of all things I've been taught to hate since I was a child, is dead.

Word came from the BBC via my younger brother, and I can't help but feel an overwhelming sense of joy. Because an individual who ruled Cuba with an iron fist for the better part of 5 decades is no more. The island nation is sure to mourn the loss of their leader in public, but I guarantee that they would sooner be in the streets of Miami dancing, singing, and celebrating just as their cousins are.

But this begs a new question: now what?

Seriously, what do we do now? The man who shaped a good portion of US foreign diplomacy for the second half of the 20th century now lay in state, but we are no closer to an answer than we were when he stepped down from the 'presidency' in 2008 and handed over power to his younger brother, Raúl. It's truly an issue of grave importance when you consider that both major political parties in our nation have agreed to handle the Castro regime in the same manner: a UN-opposed embargo and virtual house arrest of the island and its nearly 11.3 million inhabitants.

That's not to say that things haven't been (mostly) civil between the two nations since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Earlier this year, the Cuban national baseball team hosted the Tampa Bay Rays in an international friendly. The 4-1 victory for the Rays marked an important milestone and set in motion events which even a year ago seemed to be works of pure fiction. In 2015, the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba just two months after President Obama announced that Cuba had been removed from the CIA Terrorism Sponsors list. This year, commercial flights between Cuba and the mainland US reopened after over 50 years and, for the first time since Calvin Coolidge was our commander-in-chief, a sitting US president visited the Communist country.

Regardless, we must progress cautiously. It is because of my social liberality that I must condemn the Cuban government and its leaders. How could we possibly move forward in reestablishing relations when the Castro regime openly rejected both the Church and LGBT individuals since the Party took power in 1959. Political ‘re-education’ of gays, political dissidents, and others, along with the systematic oppression of ethnic minorities, has multiple international human rights organizations calling for some form of intervention to allow freedom of expression, religious practice, and better judicial/legal systems for accused parties. So, before individuals begin to cite Castro’s work to expand health care and create working educational and welfare systems, remember that these systems were successful due to organized, government-led persecution of countless others.

So what is the next step? To be honest we don't really know. This will be the first time Cuba has operated without Fidel in the background since Batista was deposed in the late 50's. Even so, Raúl is still the leader of the Party Central Committee until 2018, and once he steps down, the island-nation is sure to enter its first true power struggle since the Korean War. We may see the formation of a stronger, Soviet-style military junta. We may watch as the Castro regime continues with Alejandro, Raúl's son. We could even witness the first truly democratic election in the history of the nation. No matter what, we also have to face our own political turmoil and recognize that a capitalist, alt-right, isolationist individual is about to assume leadership of our own country. We really cannot predict what will happen over the next few years. Despite this, I, and many Cuban-Americans, are celebrating.

No, I do not celebrate the death of a man. I celebrate the death of a tyrannical monster responsible for over a half a century of pain and suffering of my family and hundreds of thousands of other families both in the United States and Cuba.

I celebrate the possibility of my grandparents returning to their homes for the first time in years, joined by my father and uncle as they make way to an island which could have, under different circumstances, been their home.

I celebrate the idea that Cuba, one day, will be free to join us in the 21st century and its people, with proper guidance, will serve as a model to remind Americans what it means to be a loving, accepting country which prides itself in mixed heritage, religious tolerance, and political freedom.