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Castro's
daughter is far from a replica of Papa
Miami radio host only discovered at
age 10 that she was dictator's child by
a socialite
By Steven Chase. The
Globe and Mail. Canada, Saturday, December
6, 2003.
MIAMI -- When Alina Fernandez first met
Fidel Castro, he gave her a little guerrilla
doll version of himself, complete with olive-green
fatigues, facial hair and a military cap.
Only a toddler at the time, she instantly
hated the toy and tried to rip off its tiny
beard.
It was 1959 and Ms. Fernandez didn't yet
know that the newly installed Cuban dictator
was her biological father, or that she was
the love child of his tryst with a married
Havana socialite.
Decades after that inauspicious meeting,
Ms. Fernandez, now 47, has grown into a
woman who's anything but a replica of her
Communist papa.
She's turned into an unrelenting critic
of his 44-year-old regime, first as a dissident
daughter in Havana in the early 1990s, then
as an outspoken defector in 1993 and recently
as a talk show host at one of Miami's Cuban
exile radio stations.
It's a lonely campaign. She has not spoken
to her father in about 20 years and no longer
talks with her mother, Natalia Revuelta,
who once sold jewels to buy Mr. Castro weapons
and remains a die-hard supporter of the
revolution.
"One of the Cuban tragedies is that
ideology breaks you apart so I don't want
to have any more political discussions with
my mother. I have had enough of that,"
Ms. Fernandez said in an interview at the
modest bungalow where she lives with her
25-year-old daughter in Miami's Little Havana.
She is soft-spoken, with a voice that carries
a hint of sadness. A book she wrote several
years back about her life as Mr. Castro's
illegitimate daughter details a battle with
anorexia nervosa, psychosomatic illness
and a "nervous condition."
"I am not the kind of joyful person,"
she says. "But I am fine."
Ms. Fernandez fled Cuba in 1993, disguising
herself with a wig and heavy makeup and
using a faked passport to board a commercial
flight to Spain. Disillusioned by "Castroism"
and tired of being spied on by Cuban authorities,
she wanted to be free of a country she describes
as caught in a time warp.
"You are stuck in 1959: the same political
speeches, the same military uniforms, the
same slogans, the same fears."
Ten years after she quit her native land,
she has found a niche for herself in Miami,
the heart of the Cuban diaspora. Half of
the 1.2 million Cubans in the United States
live in Miami-Dade County and Ms. Fernandez,
who settled in the city in 2001, has secured
a place as a minor star in the pantheon
of Cuban exiles.
Dario Moreno, an associate professor of
political science at Florida International
University who follows Cuban-American politics,
says she wields "celebrity status rather
than real political influence." "She's
viewed as someone who is a good spokesman
because of the symbolic value that even
[Mr. Castro's] daughter rejects the revolution.
And in that sense she . . . [is] fodder
for the exile view of how horrible the revolution
is."
Her radio show reflects her dislike for
telling people what they should think. Simply
Alina, which runs five nights a week, and
reaches listeners in Cuba despite Havana's
attempts to jam U.S. radio signals, is a
variety show, not a political broadcast.
A recent show dealt with the health effects
of stress.
But the subject of Mr. Castro's regime,
never far from the minds of WQBA's Latin-American
audience, pops up frequently. Ms. Fernandez
regularly dials up Castro critics in Cuba
and puts them on air.
She does more than talk. Ms. Fernandez
recently returned from a trip to six European
countries where she tried to drum up more
vigorous opposition to this year's mass
jailing of Cuban dissidents.
This spring, in the harshest crackdown
in years, the regime jailed 75 dissidents
with sentences ranging from 12 to 27 years
-- and executed three more Cubans who'd
tried to hijack a ship to escape the island.
"I have to do whatever I can to break
the wall of ignorance regarding my country,"
she says. "There has been a lot of
propaganda and nobody has known the truth
until the last few years."
A former model in Cuba, Ms. Fernandez has
high cheekbones and strong, almost aristocratic,
features. To the casual observer, it appears
she has inherited her father's eyes.
Her passionate opposition to Mr. Castro's
regime is matched by a surprising lack of
feeling toward her biological father. She
wants nothing more to do with Mr. Castro,
declaring he "means nothing" to
her. She regards her famous heritage as
"something I cannot avoid" and
doesn't try to make contact with Mr. Castro
because "he won't listen to anybody."
Their relationship was never stable. She
only learned at 10 that Mr. Castro was her
father and his attention waxed and waned
during the next decade and a half as he
alternately lavished gifts on her and ignored
her, from afar.
"He will never be the type of father
who will read you bedtime stories."
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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