CASTRO’S DAUGHTER: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba
By Alina Fernandez, translated from Spanish by Dolores M. Koch
St. Martin’s, 259 pages, $23.95
When others first meet Cubans–whether in the U.S., on the island itself, or anywhere else–they always ask: What do you think of Fidel Castro? The question is invariably posed jovially, as if in anticipation of some terribly clever punch line.
For most Cubans, there is only one answer: Fidel is the devil. This is said both in hatred and love, in derision and admiration.
In Miami and other exile communities, he is called by his first name as if he were family: Fidel, the black sheep; Fidel, the bad seed; Fidel, that jackass. In Havana and the rest of the island, he has no name. People indicate him by pulling at invisible beards or tapping make-believe epaulets.
On both sides of the Straits of Florida, there’s a story about a speech Fidel gave during the revolution’s early days. Before he’d even begun, a white dove perched on his left shoulder, leaving everyone breathless.
This is Fidel’s voodoo: He does the impossible. He gets that bird to pose with him–whether through magic or trickery doesn’t matter: In one case, it’s divine intervention, in the other a stroke of theatrical genius; in both, he wins.
Imagine, for a minute, calling such an overwhelming figure as Fidel Castro “Daddy” (or “Papi,” as most Cubans refer to their fathers). It’s hard to tell what term Alina Fernandez used to address him by reading “Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba,” by Fidel’s most complicated offspring.
Fernandez, the result of a youthful, and adulterous, liaison between the comandante and socialite Natalia Revuelta, didn’t know it was his blood in her veins until 1966, when she was 10. She barely knew him. His first present to her had been a doll made to look just like him, with beard and revolutionary gear. (In an attempt to make the doll more childlike, Fernandez ripped off its facial hair, which disconcerted him.)
The memoir, published first in Spain a few years ago, has suffered a title change in the otherwise excellent translation by Dolores M. Koch (who is considerably more relaxed here than she was with writer Reinaldo Arenas’ autobiography a few years ago).
In Spain, where Fernandez now lives after a brief political asylum in 1993 in New York, it was called “Alina: The Memoirs of Fidel Castro’s Rebel Daughter” and caused a sensation. The title’s emphasis was much more on her personal story, perhaps because she was already known to the Spanish public as Fidel’s illegitimate hippie daughter who was constantly mouthing off to the foreign press and embarrassing her father with glam photos of herself lounging on Havana’s famous seawall while complaining about the price of meat.
In the U.S., the title–while putting the emphasis on the famous father instead of the lesser-known daughter–adds an inadvertent twist. “An exile’s memoir” suggests that this could also be anybody’s story, the tale of anyone who left Cuba in dismay over the revolution, a glimpse at survival in Cuba today.
But what makes the book fascinating is precisely that it is Fernandez’s tale. Written, by all accounts (although with plenty of rumor to contradict them), without a ghost writer, and in a smooth, elliptical style that includes plenty of irony, literary allusion and the occasional hallucination, “Castro’s Daughter” is surprisingly self-effacing and lucid.
Fernandez, who suffered from the connection to and disconnection from her powerful father, is not a hero even in her own story. As a child she is charming and sweet, but she grows up to be an impulsive young woman in a highly dysfunctional home, often a dilettante; at various times, Fernandez worked in publlic relations, was a model and studied medicine. By her own reckoning, she is often unstable, selfish and frustrated. She is also, like her father, sexual and independent, qualities that in Fidel’s macho world are admired in men but abhorred in women.
Even so, readers should realize this book does not tell all. Even at her most revelatory, Fernandez is clearly holding back. Nearly everything she gives up as objective information about Fidel has already appeared elsewhere. Perhaps she is cautious because her mother–a legendary figure in her own right said to still be in love with Fidel–has chosen to remain in Cuba. Or perhaps Fernandez is simply protecting herself: As an adult, she fell out with her father and found herself monitored, her friends harassed by Fidel’s secret service, who were ordered to report all of her activities to him.
What Fernandez does offer up is a unique, bird’s-eye view of her father, who in January celebrated 40 years in power, making him the hemisphere’s elder statesman and last living holdout of communist rule. What is curious is the Fidel that emerges here: a man with total control who still bothers himself with the minutiae of governing. According to Fernandez, Fidel, the quintessential absentee father, was completely distracted by work, even when he was hanging out at her mother’s house with friends, even when he came to visit her at school.
Even Fidel’s affair with Natalia began under the auspices of the revolution; their adulterous behavior was approved of as a sign of how far she’d gone in renouncing bourgeois values. She offered her home as a safe house; later, she and Fidel corresponded when he was jailed. In letters Fernandez released last year, apparently with her mother’s approval, Fidel discusses the French Revolution and how, ultimately, only the state can guarantee a social safety net (anyone looking for early clues to his Marxism might start here, instead of his published speeches).
Because Fernandez’s story is as much about Fidel as about her, it begins with his early life in the hills of Oriente, the province that has ignited all of Cuba’s wars and revolutions. Here we meet Fidel’s violent, taciturn father, ironically named Angel, and his mother, Lina, a much younger and sensual woman than Angel’s legal wife. Among other things, we learn that one of Fidel’s grandfather’s was a Turkish immigrant who may have been a Jew, perhaps a converso. Fidel’s roots are then gently contrasted with Natalia’s, which appear to include an aristocratic Briton.
By the time Fernandez herself emerges, Natalia’s romance with Fidel is over. Fernandez portrays her mother as idealistic and committed to the revolution against all logic; what she doesn’t say is that among Cubans she is considered a tragic figure, somewhat touched, who has been known to cause public scenes in order to get the comandante’s attention.
Throughout the book, Fernandez adds intimate detail on a host of public figures in the Cuban pantheon. Hildita Guevara, Che’s daughter and Fernandez’s comrade early on, comes off as equally rebellious and duped out of her rightful place in her father’s life by Che’s second wife and her set of kids. Fidelito, Fidel’s only legitimate son, appears here as opportunistic, whereas popular lore in Cuba and in exile paints him as so dumb that his father hides him away out of embarrassment. Vilma Espin, Fidel’s sister-in-law, who is universally scorned, is here a concerned aunt and loving mother, consumed with family matters as much as the country’s.
Perhaps the most tantalizing portrait, besides Fidel’s, is that of Raul Castro, the comandante’s younger brother and official heir to the leadership of Cuba. Raul has always enjoyed a dramatically contradictory public persona: In exile, he is reviled as homosexual; in Cuba, he is talked about as a lady’s man. In Fernandez’s book, he is the most humanizing element of the Castro family, a man devoted to his many children and concerned about her welfare as well.
This positive portrayal of her uncle no doubt hasn’t helped Fernandez’s case among exiles; they still regard her with suspicion, despite her protesting against her father during his 1995 visit to New York and repeatedly calling for his ouster.
Though Fernandez clearly stands against her father’s revolution, her refusal to denounce the many Cubans who have stayed behind and in any way supported the revolution puts her at odds with the exile community, which condemms everyone and everything having to do with Fidel and his government. Fernandez is a child of the revolution; while she rails–fiercely–about many of its injustices, she is supportive of its achievements in ways antithetical to the exile absolutism that affords Fidel no quarter. She is thus unpredictable, uncontrollable.
Moreover, Fernandez is a privileged product of the revolution–no matter how horrible her living situation, it was always better than her neighbors’. Her resentment of and dependence on her father has not been diminished by her escape from Cuba. In exile, Fernandez lives off his myth: Her writing is important mostly because of what she says about him, her parents letters are of interest because he wrote half of them. Even as she tries to debunk his legend, she contributes to it.
For Cubans, Fidel, like the devil himself, is an invention of necessity. He is the mirror onto which they project their heroism and betrayals, their sense of righteousness and valor. For his rebellious and sensitive daughter, he is the source of life and anguish, the vein of gold and bitterness.
