Well, it seems his daughter doesn't think too highly of him.
Ed Vulliamy in Havana
Sunday March 24, 2002
The Observer
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.'