Dolphins linebacker Kiko Alonso gave the fans in Miami what they wanted Sunday, picking off Colin Kaepernick and making a jarring tackle on the 49ers’ quarterback that preserved a 31-24 Dolphins win. After the game, Alonso, the son of a Cuban immigrant, acknowledged that Kaepernick had caused “bad blood” with comments the San Francisco player had made about Fidel Castro.
“Yeah, it matters,” Alonso said Sunday of Kaepernick’s words about Castro, which were made shortly before the former Cuban leader died Friday. The quarterback had appeared reluctant to condemn Castro and offered praise for his efforts in boosting Cuba’s “literacy rate.”
“Usually, I just try to play my game. But I did try to hit him,” Alonso told the Herald’s Armando Salguero, who was the reporter who grilled Kaepernick about Castro last week. Salguero, like Alonso’s father, was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States.
With that father, Carlos Alonso, on hand after the game, the linebacker told Salguero, “You two saw what happened in Cuba firsthand. I didn’t. But I do have feelings about it.
“So there was some bad blood there for me with Kaepernick.”
Alonso made his feelings about the quarterback known on social media, as well. Shortly after the game ended, he posted a photo of his game-ending tackle with a caption that included a vulgar Spanish word, plus the hashtag, “#CubaLibre.”
Kaepernick, who was booed heavily by the Miami crowd, faced more questions about his Castro comments after the game. “Trying to push the false narrative that I was a supporter of the oppressive things that he did, it’s just not true,” the quarterback told reporters.
“He doesn’t know about the suffering the Cuban people have had,” Carlos Alonso said of Kaepernick, adding, “He’s ignorant. He still has no clue what a ruthless killer of the Cuban people this guy [Castro] was.”