The first question feels inevitable, as if she had been preparing for it all her life or as if she were condemned to answer it for the rest of her life.
— What does it mean to be your father’s daughter?
— It’s my destiny, what do you want me to say?” replies Alina Fernández, 70. “What Fidel Castro has done to Cuba hurts me deeply. But I share its pain, and a shared pain sometimes hurts less.”
More than Cuban, Fernández, Castro’s illegitimate daughter, is a true Havana native, and she finds it hard to navigate Miami’s wide avenues without having everything within a 20-minute drive, as it is in Havana. She has just come in from the street, opens the doors of her modest home, and offers coffee and cold water. She maintains, she says, a “low profile.”
For years, she worked in this city in a primary cell‑culture laboratory for research, supplementing her income with radio programs and producing shows. She has just taken part in the production of the documentary The Daughter of the Revolution, by director Thaddeus D. Matula, which premiered recently at the Miami Film Festival. The film not only tells her story but also aims to be a collective portrait of recent Cuban history from the perspective of exile.
When she was 10 years old, Fernández learned that Castro — the commander-in-chief, the man who owned the country and spent up to seven hours delivering speeches on national television during the time she and all the other children wanted to watch cartoons — was not just her mother Natalia Revuelta’s friend, but also her biological father. Until then, she had believed her biological father was the cardiologist Orlando Fernández. It was her mother who told her the truth.
“She was afraid someone would tell me one day in the street. The first thing I remember is a feeling of betrayal, because almost everyone around me knew it, even my best friend, and that hurt me much more than anything else. I’ve had a phobia of lies ever since. I questioned myself and said: well, until the other day, I was the daughter of a worm, a traitor, and now I’m the daughter of this man who’s a hero, someone children don’t like, a man who could talk for hours every day, in a long monologue. What I did know right away is that it didn’t change anything; the fact that I knew he was my father didn’t change how he treated me.”
Castro would come to the house, sometimes he’d pay her attention, sit down to play. But there was no warmth in the relationship. According to Fernández, he was someone who didn’t really know “how to deal with a child.” “Besides, he wasn’t interested,” she says. “He had occasional paternal outbursts that always surprised me. But when I was 10 and a half, I was entering adolescence, and everything starts to get mixed up, you start thinking for yourself. It’s no longer just what your closest people tell you, but you start developing your own likes and dislikes. He never dazzled nor mesmerized me, despite that massive state of devotion towards him.”
It was the same fascination her mother felt until the day she died in 2015, at the age of 89. “My mother was in love with Fidel all her life. We’re talking about a man with a typical narcissistic personality, and that explains a lot, because Cuba was made in his image. So when he lost his feelings for my mother, when she was no longer useful to him, she was like trash, discarded. My mother never got over that. It’s something I never understood, no matter how much she tried to explain it to me.”
When Fernández was about 20 years old, she had a serious conversation with Castro. One of the few. At the time, artisans had begun gathering in Cathedral Square to sell all kinds of goods. “In a country where there are no consumer goods, not even a handkerchief, a keychain, or a pair of shoes, these artisans selling their products became very popular.” It was the 1970s in Cuba. Suddenly, the police raided the vendors, arresting them and confiscating their wares. Fernández asked Castro a question: “Why? Explain to me why these people, who are doing us a favor, have to be arrested. Conversations with him were useless. He had a monologue; he liked to listen to himself and, of course, he wasn’t one to accept questioning. His answer was this: the state can never lose its monopoly on commerce. That’s what Cuba is to this day.”
After several failed attempts to leave the country, Fernández finally left Cuba in 1993, at the height of the Special Period, by assuming the identity of a Spanish citizen. “I was able to leave by pretending to be someone else. I imitated a Spanish accent at the airport, wore heavy makeup, a wig, and a cap. I was a middle-aged woman delighted to have enjoyed some mojitos and who knows what else on the beaches of Cuba.”
She arrived in Madrid, and, a few years later, settled in Miami. She returned to the island for the last time three years ago. Today, amidst the threats from Washington and Havana, Fernández believes that Cuba has reached “a point of no return.” One of the main culprits behind this misfortune is the same man who gave her life.
Question. Does your constant criticism of the Cuban government also feel like a duty, given who you are?
Answer. What I have done is also dictated by a feeling of guilt due to blood ties that I shouldn’t feel. Duty, too. Everyone who sees reality, beyond what they are being taught or indoctrinated with, must speak out. Because the truth is becoming increasingly difficult to hide. We Cubans have been the subjects of a completely absurd social experiment: a Revolution that has lasted almost 70 years. Revolutions are supposedly short periods in history. I always wonder what would have happened to the French if theirs had lasted 70 years. We have lived in this kind of political and ideological, anti-family hysteria for at least five generations.
Q. Who is Alina Fernández beyond a woman who has grown up in the shadow of someone like Castro?
A. First and foremost, I am a mother, a woman, and a Cuban, before I am anyone’s daughter. Growing up in that environment, having the opportunity to see both sides of the coin, is what made me who I am.
Q. Did knowing that Castro was your father make you start asking yourself other kinds of questions, or did it create any conflict?
A. I’ve been asking myself these questions since I was very little. I used to write things down, make notes, or ask my mom questions. I saw that man and that feverish Revolution all around me, and everyone marching, doing hours of voluntary work so that all Cubans could live well, but what I saw was more misery, more problems. We were hungry. The Revolution triumphed in 1959, and in 1961, the ration book was established. Two years later, there were already shortages. I remember eating lentils without salt at home. Bread, milk, and butter disappeared. From the beginning, transportation started to become scarce. Because when the state takes over everything, and it’s not well managed, everything starts to fail.
Q. Were there shortages even in your own home? What privileges did you have as Castro’s daughter?
A. My mother was so strict that she said buying an egg on the black market wasn’t revolutionary. Everyone was living off the black market, but my mother resisted; she tried to adjust to what the Revolution provided. Fidel, at some point, started to help occasionally with a little milk or something else.
Q. When you were 12 years old, Castro offered to give you his surname. Why did you choose not to use it?
A. The person interested in the surname wasn’t me; it was my mother, who wanted to somehow legitimize the fact that I existed. A law had to be changed, and I was given an explanation that it couldn’t be done. I was born into a marriage and was recognized by another father. I thought it was an unnecessary, underhanded procedure. I even found it humiliating. He was determined, but it wasn’t in his interest either. If he had wanted to do it so badly, he would have.
Q. Do you remember any personal moments with Castro? There’s a photo of you two together at your wedding…
A. In this case, he had a paternalistic outburst. We were planning my wedding, and I was 16 years old. That outraged him. To my surprise, he flew into a rage. I didn’t ask his permission to marry because I didn’t consider him my father, and I didn’t think he’d care. I hadn’t seen him for three years. He was hurt, he felt guilty about having a 16-year-old daughter getting married, practically a child. Then he visited the house a few more times and then disappeared again. He made it a condition that if I postponed the wedding, he would take care of everything. It was a rather modest wedding, considering it was being subsidized by the king of Havana. I waited a few months, finally turning 17, and he went and signed the authorization for the wedding. Even though he wasn’t my legal father. He was whatever he wanted to be.
Q. What was your relationship with the rest of your siblings, Castro’s children?
A. One of Fidel’s strangest characteristics as a person was that he didn’t want his children to associate with the rest of the family, and he kept them isolated until they grew up and were able to escape the nest a little, but we didn’t have much contact.
Q. It is even said that Fidel and Raúl’s children have hardly any contact.
A. That’s exactly right. One day, Raúl’s son [Alejandro Castro Espín] and one of Fidel’s sons happened to be in the same place, and immediately there was an order that they couldn’t interact. A very peculiar thing, and also, for me, inexplicable.
Q. Now that negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. are being discussed, we see that it is members of Raúl’s family — his son Alejandro and his grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, alias “El Cangrejo” — who have been participating, no one from Fidel’s side. Is this telling?
A. The only one who tried to place one of Fidel Castro’s sons within that elite was Raúl, who nominated Fidelito Castro for the National Assembly of People’s Power, and the people voted against it as an act of rebellion; they didn’t want him in that position. Fidelito killed himself, and the other children have never held an official position. His narcissistic personality wants you to remember him by his image. It’s very obvious.
Q. The most visible family member now is Sandro Castro. Fidel has a grandson who’s an influencer and has called for change in Cuba…
A. Times have changed. People ask me about Sandro, but I don’t know him, and I can’t understand things because there’s a huge generation gap. I think anything that’s said about the need for change is useful. However you say it, however timidly, or with a good or bad joke, it’s important.
Q. Was there a moment when Castro stopped being in your life?
A. I was the one who separated from him; I didn’t want any connection. In the end, he was a terrible burden. When my daughter was born, I asked him not to visit her at the house; every visit from him caused a commotion. When I was little, when he frequented my house, people would come with letters for me to give to him; that was a sad experience, too. People knew he visited us and would deliver letters with very sad stories, and I would try to give them to him. I read about many tragedies.
Q. Beyond the energy blockade that the United States has maintained against Cuba since January, where does the Cuban nation stand today?
A. At a point of no return. If this critical situation of no electricity continues, if this drags on, I don’t know what might happen. It’s unlikely that people can bring down a country like that with banging pots and pans. I believe that dictatorships rise with a little help and also fall, collapse, with another push. Internally, it’s difficult to achieve. We’re talking about an island where, on top of everything else, the younger generation has been forced to leave just to survive.
Q. Reports have surfaced about the Trump administration’s intention to remove Miguel Díaz‑Canel from the political chessboard while keeping the Castro family in place. What do you make of that?
A. Well, I don’t know to what extent the Castro family still holds power in Cuba. I do know that the military conglomerate GAESA has enormous power and a great deal of money. Who’s in charge? Who controls it? I haven’t the slightest idea. Of course, what people want is one thing, and what can or cannot be done is another. I wish the people of Cuba could unanimously express their discontent, their hopelessness, their misery, but it’s impossible. Focusing on Díaz-Canel, who has borne the brunt of the unpopularity of this madness, doesn’t solve any problems.
I see a disconnect between Díaz‑Canel’s official discourse, the supposed negotiations that are taking place, and claims that there were no Cubans in Venezuela [during the capture of Nicolás Maduro] — only for 32 dead Cubans to appear. Nobody agrees. It’s a very disconcerting period, and we don’t know what the truth is. I dare to have hope; I also have that feeling that I’ve had hope many times before, and I’ve had to swallow it. What’s needed is change. By any means necessary. People in Cuba need to breathe, to enter the 21st century, to give their children a life, they need hope, and freedom is essential for all of this.
Q. What do you think negotiations between Trump and Fidel Castro would have been like?
A. Fidel had leverage to negotiate. We forget that he was the ideological leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. Cuba was involved in every conflict, both existing and imagined, around the world, in places where the U.S. hadn’t even set foot.
In other words, the influence Fidel Castro had on the kind of political polarization we see today is ignored and forgotten. So, he could have sat down to negotiate; he had the leverage. That leverage doesn’t exist now. There was a presence, an influence, that simply isn’t there anymore. What I see is that all this time, there’s been no ability to say the battle was lost. I don’t know whether Fidel would have been capable of saying, well, yes, I lost — and now I’ll see what I can gain from an orderly, dignified defeat. I imagine that would have been his position, not this entrenched, bunker‑style standoff we’re seeing instead.
Q. How obsessed was Castro with the United States?
A. It was his leitmotif, his sole reason for being. And it served him well, it was very useful. Fidel was an incredibly astute person, both politically and as a manipulator. He forged this image of the valiant guerrilla fighter, alone in his great struggle against imperialism 90 miles away. All that imagery was created to reinforce his power. We’re deeply damaged by it — this has been a systematic hammering of people’s minds, of education. The idea that every day we’re battling imperialism, that we’re some kind of little David facing Goliath, is absurd. If the United States were interested in the continued existence of this 90 miles away, it would no longer exist.
Q. You’ve said Miami is your second home, but if something were to change, would you return to Cuba for good?
A. Yes, of course. And I’ve been back as much as I could to recharge my batteries. I need Cuba, something I didn’t know before I came back. To get off the plane and feel like yourself again. Here, I’m a freak who’s had to learn another language at over 40 years old; I didn’t know the value of money, and I still don’t. When I returned to Cuba, despite all the tragedy, I felt that inner energy was recharged. If there wasn’t a special energy in Cuba, we Cubans wouldn’t have been able to survive 67 years of this madness.
Q. Fidel died in 2016, and Raúl Castro is 94 years old today. Some believe that the historical leaders of the Revolution will pass away without having seen justice, after decades of subjugating the Cuban people. What do you think?
A. Those primarily responsible for this tragedy are dead, yet many accomplices remain. The greatest resentment has come from the Cuban government toward those of us who are outside of Cuba. This exile community is the one that provides aid to the country. At some point, we will have to reach an agreement in order to coexist, to rebuild. There is too much pain.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
