Castro’s daughter speaks at UTPA

Jennifer L. Berghom

EDINBURG - Alina Fernandez will never forget how a cartoon she was watching on television as a child was interrupted by an execution ordered by her father.

"Life went from white to black and stayed gray ever since," said Fernandez, the illegitimate daughter of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Fernandez spoke Tuesday with college students and others at the University of Texas-Pan American about her experiences growing up under her father's rule and her escape from the island nation in 1993.

The UTPA program board's Heritage Committee chose Fernandez to speak as part of the ongoing campus events the board plans, said Marisela Gonzalez, student activities coordinator for the university.

Fernandez was selected before her father's recent announcement that he was stepping down as Cuba's president, Gonzalez said.

Castro announced in February that he would not seek reappointment as the nation's leader, a position he had held since 1959. His brother Raul has succeeded him as president.

Fernandez, who now lives in Miami and hosts a radio program about Cuban-American issues, wrote about her experiences in her 1998 book Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba.

She read excerpts of it Wednesday, including passages about how her parents met and how the first three years of her biological father's rule changed the lives of her family and those of her fellow Cuban nationals.

"Fear embraced the population and state and stayed with the people forever," she said.

The petite redhead said she saw her father often throughout her childhood and remembers how he would bring her gifts from time to time. She also remembers how she would ask him about social ills she saw, but that her questions would go unanswered.

Fernandez told the crowd of about 100 how people's freedoms were taken away little by little and how the strict ration system led many to buy and sell items on the black market.

Her growing disgust with how her father ran the country, the ailing economy that resulted after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and her father's ordering of the execution of people whom he once considered friends prompted her to flee to Spain in 1993.

"Life became almost impossible," Fernandez said in an interview before her speech.

During that interview, Fernandez said she felt her father's exit from government was a good thing for the Cuban people, but she does not think the country will see much political change while her uncle Raul is in power.

"I think my uncle won't risk his political career" by making needed social reforms, she said.

She likened the new Cuban government to the current Chinese government.

"It's bizarre, unique," she said.