As thousands of anti-regime protesters gathered outside the White House just before midnight Monday to mark the 26th of July with a candlelight vigil, Alex Perez and Chris Cruz stood off to the side and smiled at the scene.
“I’m 27 and I never thought I would live to see something like this,” said Perez, a Hialeah resident who came to the United States from Cuba seven years ago. “We need to make sure there’s pressure for people who didn’t have to go through what I went through to know what’s going on in Cuba.”
Perez and Cruz made plans weeks ago to come to Washington for a planned demonstration timed for July 26, the date that Fidel Castro led his first attack against the Batista government and a national holiday in Cuba. They ended up getting 10 of their friends to join them in a rental van after mass pro-democracy protests broke out across Cuba on July 11.
Read more from our news partner at The Miami Herald.
