Sep 29 2008
Alina Fernandez: Growing Up the Daughter of Fidel Castro
Alina Fenandesz uses the name of the man her mother was married to and not the name of her birth father, Fidel Castro.
Alina spoke tonight at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale as part of the university’s celebration of Latino Heritage month. Her life story begins when her mother and Fidel, both married at the time to other people, began a love affair that lasted decades.
Her mother supported the revolution and in 1959 when Castro took over the country, the man that Alina had known for four years as her father fled the country with her older sister. Over the next few years, she would learn that the “hairy man” she interrupted her cartoons with tanks was her father.
The problem with being the daughter of a man like Fidel Castro is that by the time she was 10, people were coming to her asking for her to help with their concerns. Over the years, she would watch her mother light up when Fidel would come to visit and watched her country fall apart.
In 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union left Cuba in dire economic straits, friends in the Cuban community in Miami helped Alina and her daughter flee to the United States.
So what does that ahve to dow ith America today? Alina may have huge political differences with her father, but she udnerstands the impact he ahd on the world around him. For almost 50 years, he was the biggest enemy of the United States in the United Nation and in the world community. He was the speaker of the unaligned states in the United Nations and instilled the idea across the Middle East and North Africa, and in Latin America, that the United States was an imperialist oppressor.
Even now, his influence continues. With her uncle Raoul as the new president of Cuba, Alina said things are not much better. Though he has lessened some restrictions on the people including the first ever use of cell phones on the island and allowing some private growing of food, the changes are not extreme enough to make Cuba a better place to live.
No matter which Castro controls Cuba, the next American president will liikely have to deal with the repurcussions of Castro’s Cuba for years to come.
