Don’t waste tears of mourning on Fidel Castro, so-called man of the people.

The fact is, that Fidel never really existed.

For more than a half century, the Cuban dictator, whose death at age 90 was announced Friday, presented himself as a modest revolutionary, sporting an unkempt beard and rumpled olive-drab fatigues. He claimed a monthly income of just 900 pesos — $43 — and a “fisherman’s hut” on some nondescript beach as his home.

That was the public Fidel, according to Castro’s longtime bodyguard, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, who defected to the United States and wrote a book about his experiences.

In “The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Líder Maximo,” published in 2015, Sanchez describes Castro’s hidden life as driven by political ruthlessness, mistresses and greed.

“While his people suffered, Fidel Castro lived in comfort — keeping everything, including his eight children, his many mistresses, even his wife, a secret,” wrote Sanchez.

The account details Castro’s involvement in a secret program offering safe haven in Cuba for Colombian drug traffickers going to and from the United States in the late ’80s — a scheme that generated a huge personal fortune for Fidel.

When U.S. officials caught on to Fidel’s involvement in the scheme, he promptly blamed one of his most loyal allies, Revolutionary Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who had fought alongside Fidel in the revolution.

Fidel brought Gen. Ochoa before a kangaroo court and had him executed by firing squad, Ochoa wrote — and forced his senior aides including Sanchez and Fidel’s own brother, Raul Castro, to watch the trial and execution.

While Fidel did at least partly keep his pledge to share the wealth with the Cuban people — providing free health care and education, largely paid for through the sponsorship of the Soviet Union — he secretly enjoyed a lifestyle of high luxury. His 20 homes included a private island accessibly only by yacht. His children were raised on a lush farm that Sanchez compared to the Garden of Eden, laden with fruit trees and a personal dairy cow for each child “so as to satisfy each one’s individual taste, since the acidity and creaminess of fresh milk varies from one cow to another.”

Meanwhile, Castro executed thousands of opposing voices, thought nothing of unfair trials, and imposed arbitrary imprisonment and execution, sometimes with no trial at all.

Under Fidel, independent newspapers were closed and homosexuals, priests and others viewed as a threat were forced into labor camps for “re-education.”

And the ultimate truth is that Fidel’s secret life was no secret to the Cuban people. News of his death Friday night sparked joyous celebrations among the Cuban immigrants in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami — immigrants who maintain ties with relatives back in Cuba.

As for the revolution, that died several years ago. Over the passage of 50 years, Fidel has become an empty emblem of an economic system he imposed — and ruined.

It’s time for Fidel’s Cuban regime to die as well. Cuba’s 11 million people long for freedom and the prosperity that freedom engenders. They deserve the opportunity to import the independence and diversity of thought that their countrymen and women risked their lives to get when they sought asylum in the United States.

Fidel’s death could signal a second Cuban revolution. It is not an occasion of mourning. It is a time for great hope and expectation.