Fidel Castro's daughter hopes US can bring down her father's regime

Link copiedShareShare articleGrowing up in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, Alina Fernández's childhood home was frequently visited by a burly man in military fatigues. When Alina was 10 years old, she learned he was her father. "Everyone knew except me," she told the ABC in an Australian-exclusive interview. "I felt betrayed." Alina Fernández with her father Fidel Castro on her wedding day. (Supplied: Alina Fernández) Her mother Natalia Revuelta Clews, a middle-class political activist, developed a romance with Castro in the early 1950s. Alina was born in 1956. Three years later, Castro and his guerilla forces overthrew the Cuban government. The revolutionary Marxist went on to rule Cuba for five decades. Despite an upbringing surrounded by propaganda and powerful people, Alina says she always felt uncomfortable about her father's communist regime. She recalls being sent to do "voluntary works that were not voluntary" and quickly learned that even "language meant something else" in Cuba. Fidel Castro, pictured in 1972, led the movement that overthrew the Cuban government in 1959. (Reuters: Prensa Latina) "For my generation, the arrival of the revolution was a radical change, like day to night," she says. "I never felt that it was a normal life. "Food started to disappear immediately, only two years after the triumph of the revolution. Everything again was disrupted." So she began to speak up and became a vocal critic. But speaking out in Cuba, even if you are Castro's daughter, is fraught with danger. Alina participating in a protest against her father in New York, October 1995. (Reuters) As a teenager Alina was offered the Castro surname but refused it, choosing instead to keep the name of her beloved stepfather. "In Cuba [the Castro name] is a hardship," she says. "People approach you always with an intention, good or bad, so you become paranoid. "You want to have a life away from his shadow, but Fidel Castro's figure in Cuba overshadows everything." Alina Fernández now lives in Miami, Florida, but still grapples with her father's legacy. The Marxist leader was known for his marathon addresses that could span four to seven hours as he passionately spoke about revolutionary principles and the evils of American capitalism and hegemony. Alina recalls praying in front of the TV, as a kid, for her dad's speeches to end. Fidel Castro flew the red flag on the doorstep of his arch enemy the United States. He fended off the Bay of Pigs invasion and survived multiple CIA assassination attempts as he implemented socialist reforms altering Cuban life for generations. Fidel Castro's public addresses were notoriously long, often lasting several hours. (Supplied: Alina Fernández) When Alina began speaking out against her father's regime, men were sent to her house to intimidate her into silence, she says. During the collapse of the Soviet Union she recalls "heroes" against the regime being executed, which was "very traumatic for the Cuban society". It was then she started to truly fear for her safety and knew she had to flee. "I was afraid from both sides," she says. "I thought something could happen to me either because of the communists or because of the people that hate him [Castro]." But Alina says the regime wouldn't let her leave, so she hatched a plan to escape. Alina Fernández left Cuba in 1993 and has not been back since. (ABC News: Bradley McLennan) When she was 37, with the help of friends abroad, she slipped past the watchful government wearing a wig and heavy makeup with a falsified Spanish passport. In the lead-up to her escape she even practised "speaking like a Spaniard". "I had to become some kind of caricature of a Spanish tourist," she says. She arrived in the US in 1993 and continued her activism against the Cuban government from there. Alina Fernandez spoke to a Senate Judiciary Committee in 2000 (pictured) on the fate of six-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez. (Reuters) "I needed to make a difference very soon," she says. "When I started to think differently, I became the enemy — like everyone else in Cuba that doesn't agree 100 per cent with the ideology of Fidel Castro. "So I stopped being a daughter a long time ago." Fidel Castro stepped down as Cuba's president in 2008, and died in 2016 at the age of 90. He was succeeded by his brother, Raúl Castro, who led Cuba for 10 years. Alina remembers him as a family man and says she was closer to him than her own father. One of Alina Fernández's childhood photos, featuring Raúl Castro (in the dark shirt). (Supplied: Alina Fernández) From her home in Miami — the heart of the exile community in the US, where one-in-three residents are of Cuban heritage — Alina has been closely watching as tensions escalate between Washington and Havana. The Trump administration has effectively blockaded Cuba's oil supply and ramped up sanctions. The country has been experiencing frequent and long blackouts while its fuel su

Fidel Castro's daughter hopes US can bring down her father's regime

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Fidel Castro's daughter hopes US can bring down her father's regime

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