On the streets of Miami’s Little Havana district, Cuban exiles partied as if Fidel Castro was already dead today.

Outside the landmark Versailles Café, where PresidentBush had sat down to breakfast with Cuban-American leaders only a day earlier, migrants puffed on cigars and waved flags as passing motorists honked their horns in celebration.

Some stood dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs, others shimmied along Calle Ocho - the Cuban district’s main thoroughfare - banging saucepans and chanting "Free Cuba" and "Down with Castro" in Spanish.

"I’m waiting for the dog to die and to see him buried," gloated Tony Alfonso, 69, who fled to Florida 34 years ago after serving a decade in a Cuban jail for attempting to overthrow Castro’s government.

Noelia Samabria, 45, came to Florida during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, when 125,000 refugees crammed into 1,700 boats to make the 90-mile crossing from Cuba.

"This is nearly the happiest day of my life. The happiest will be when he stops breathing. We want no more of his evil," she said today.

She added: "My family are still all in Cuba. Over there, they cannot smile at the news in public, but inside I know that they have joy. They want to party, but they are scared to show it.

"Here I have a job, I have food, a house, clothes. In Cuba, my mother and my sister they are lucky if they have one pair of shoes and a little food."

Helena Delmonte, who escaped Cuba at the age of seven with her parents, said: "We hope to see the end of Fidel, but we worry about his brother Raul. Fidel is a bad man who was born to do evil, not good, but Raul has double the malice. He’s a sadist who enjoys the suffering of the Cuban people."

Exiles dressed in lifejackets and paddled a mock raft made from cardboard along Calle Ocho in a reminder of the desperate measures many took to escape tyranny in Cuba.

County officials in Miami, home to 650,000 Cuban-American exiles, manned an emergency operations centre to ensure that the parties did not spill over into unrest. They also set up a "rumour control hotline" in an attempt to keep wild speculation about the exact nature of Castro’s declining health in check.

"We can’t help but be excited after four decades in exile," said José Fabregas, 57, who was brought to the US by an uncle in 1961.

The Florida senator, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said of Castro’s power-swap with his brother: "This could be the beginning of the end - or, lamentably, just a continuation of the same tyranny. Fidel Castro has brought nothing but misery to the Cuban people. At the same time, to think that his brother is taking over does not comfort the heart at all."

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