Posted on 03/23/2002 4:48:02 PM PST by Pokey78
As Cuba's communist regime enters its twilight years, a family feud is fuelling democratic hopes
A savage new voice of opposition to Fidel Castro's regime is being beamed into Havana from a Miami radio station. The owner of that voice is Fidel's daughter.
Over the past month Alina Fernández Revuelta has become the latest talk-show host to hit the cacophonous airwaves in Cuba's fin-de-communist epoch.
'Buenas noches, amigos' - good evening, friends - she kicks off the show, entitled Simplemente Alina - Simply Alina. The programme makes no mention of who she is - 'people just know,' she says.
Of all the dissidents hovering over Castro's final years, Fernández may be among the most damaging. 'I do not refer to Mr Castro as my father,' says Fernández. 'I do not love him, I am his exile.'
Fernández's opposition to her father's regime is the stuff of heated family drama. It is also the story of the child who came to hate her father and everything that he represented, and defected to ally herself with his bitterest enemies, a group that has for years plotted in Miami for his downfall.
Disgusted with Cuban politics as a young woman, Fernández joined the opposition, only to find herself persecuted by her father's government. She defected to the US in 1993, travelling on a false Spanish passport and heavily disguised via Madrid, before introducing herself to the Cuban exile opposition - literally, across a table in its unofficial headquarters, the Versailles restaurant in Miami's Little Havana.
In 1997 Fernández published a memoir describing visits by her father engulfed in 'stinking' cigar smoke and his omnipotent presence in her early life. She recalls one box-wrapped gift of a doll for her to play with: of himself, with full beard, military fatigues, red star epaulettes, cap and boots.
The emergence of the soft-spoken Fernández as the new star of Cuba's exile radio comes hot on the heels of the revelation last year that Castro had another love-child, Francisca Pupo, also living in Miami.
Fernández was also born illegitimately, the fruit of a summer fling between Castro and a Havana socialite, Natalya Revuelta, while both were married. She communicates only by letter with her mother and is harshly denounced by her aunt - Castro's sister, Juanita Castro, who also lives in Miami.
'I would like to be in touch with family members' in Havana, Fernández says, 'but I just can't do it, I'm the enemy. It's ridiculous, but that's the way it is.'
In the dynastic politics of Cuba, the personal is political. When Castro dies, his brother Raúl, Defence Minister, is slated to take over.
Fernández is of a younger generation, and at 46 is unhappy with the way her father and his relations have kept power. She is 'doing whatever I can to spread the reality of life in Cuba'.
Last week Fernández - whose show began six weeks ago - led a debate on how Mexico handed back to the authorities a bus-load of asylum-seekers who poured into its Havana embassy. 'We cannot forget what happens to Cubans who have been returned to the regime,' she said.
Another show gathered together survivors of the infamous Mariel boatlift in 1980 of 125,000 refugees, her guests recounting their ordeals at home and at sea. She has even invited members of the hated right-wing Cuban American National Federation on to her programme.
Her hope for change, she says, lies in 'democracy, not charismatic leaders, because some dynamic leaders become dictators', she says. 'Gandhi was a good leader. Nehru was a good leader. But Fidel has ruined his own country. My generation has been the victim of the manipulation of Cuban history.'
The station's programming director, Chuny Montaner, said: 'She has a soft approach, but that doesn't mean she's soft at all.'
A recent interview shows Fernández to be a nervous, complex woman, prone to biting her nails. Other accounts detail four marriages and a battle with anorexia.
Let me get this straight: Fidel Castro has a sister living in Miami who denounces those in America who criticise him?
And why is this woman living in the US? And why is she allowed to stay in the US?
Her husband is president of one of the country's main opposition groups; he is in the eighth year of a 20-year sentence in one of Castro's prisons. Conditions in the prisons are wretched as Lugo confirms: isolation, beatings, rats, druggings, spoiled food, strip searches, filth, disease, the withholding of medical care.
The traitor-rapist's Diesel Dyke sent the pack of INS thugs with H & K MP-5's to kidnap the Cuban boy whose mother died to get him to the land of the free.
The same INS that allowed over a million illegals in to re-elect the traitor-rapist in 1996 and is too sleepy to notice Atta and his ilk are here, deadly and dead.
China has a sigint installation on Cuba and is bringing in weapons even as Russia leaves Lourdes.
It's never too late to put Fidel before a fusilamiento. Badda bing, badda bang, badda adios.
Famous Florida bumper sticker: "Would the last American to leave Miami, please bring the flag."
Better tuck it back in boy.
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As a matter of fact, I was.
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Oh? And what's so ignorant about what I wrote? Are you saying there *aren't* Cuban immigrants who don't fit that description? I went to the local DMV last year and more than half the people there couldn't even speak English, and my local supermarket makes speaker announcements in Spanish, that's it. And then there's what happened in my neighborhood the day little Elian Gonzalez got sent back. Scores of people running around, screaming "Elian!" from passing cars, blocking traffic and waving the Cuban flag, starting a near-riot. I didn't see a single Stars & Stripes either. Shortly after, I had to put up with belligerent Cuban youths accusing me of sending Elian back to Cuba because I'm a gringo. So excuse the hell out of me if I'm not as sympathetic to the Elian Gonzalez controversy like the neo-con/Cuban-exile thought police say I should be.
Isn't Havana socialite an oxymoron?
You basically lumped ALL cuban exiles/immigrants into your lovely bigoted and obviously resentful diatribe.
I'm sorry that you were personally offended by the fact that the Cuban flag was waved, or that you were blamed for being a gringo (although I think it was more because you are a blatant bigot based on your statements).
This is good. Maybe while she's at it, she could also encourage all recent Cuban immigrants to learn how to speak English,
"all recent Cuban immigrants"? Not all come here knowing English (not exactly an encouraged language over there) and if they just got here, how quickly do you expect them to learn it?
stop sucking off welfare,
That shows your ignorance since Cubans are one of the least likely ethnicities to receive any type of assistance because of their resistance to government dependence in any form.
and put down that Cuban flag and wave the Stars and Stripes,
During Elian, the anti-exile crowd adopted Old Glory as their Cuban-hating emblem, so what else where the Cubans supposed to use to show unity? Maybe the Confederate flag?
instead of burning the American flag when they start another riot like they did almost two years ago.
There was ONE recorded instance of flag-burning and it was quickly stopped by other Cuban exiles. The guy who burned Old Glory was suspected of being a Castro plant in the crowd. Oh, and by the way, there was no "riot". Were any homes or businesses burned or looted? Were people dragged out of their cars and assaulted? Standing on street corners protesting loudly is not considered a riot, it's called a protest. You were just threatened by such a large group of brown people in a confined area.
Being anti-Castro is commendable, but if they can't also be Americans, then they should get back on the raft.
Rick - In case you didn't hear, if it wasn't for the Cubans, there would be a President Gore in the White House. And the "get back on the raft" comment was just plain disgusting. Ugh!
Famous Florida bumper sticker: "Would the last American to leave Miami, please bring the flag."
The only people I ever saw with those bumper stickers were the kind of people I was glad to see leaving Miami anyway.
Good night Rick. I'll be on tomorrow if you wish to continue your debate.
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