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Communism has not taken hold in Cuba, he believes, and when Castro dies the island will move away from its alien ideology. At that moment, Padilla predicts, thousands of exiles will return home and start new businesses with the money they have made in the U.S. But they will not forsake their new home in Florida: they will shuttle between the two countries as easily as if they were going from New York to Washington. Cuba will become half American, and the great irony, Padilla concludes, is that Castro, who tried to expunge the American image from the island, will only have succeeded in painting it red, white and blue.