Alina Fernández Revuelta, the daughter of the former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (1926-2016), has strongly criticized the communist regime her father established in 1959. She believes that Cuba should have had a new government long ago.
In 1993, at the age of 37, she fled from Havana, the capital of Cuba, and settled in Miami, Florida, in the United States, living a simple life like other Cuban exiles.
Born in 1956, Fernández grew up in Havana after the Cuban Revolution, belonging to the privileged circle of the so-called revolutionary elite. However, she was aware of the realities of communism from a young age. She later became one of the most outspoken critics of her father’s oppressive rule.
“I believe that since the late 1980s, Cuba should have undergone a regime change,” Fernández told the Epoch Times in an exclusive interview on March 30.
“When Fidel Castro died, we all thought it was [the end of his regime] because it was a very personalized, patriarchal… narcissistic government… However, this regime continued.”
Fernández is the daughter of Castro and Havana socialite Natalia Revuelta. The two had an extramarital affair in the mid-1950s when they were both married to other people. Fernández was raised by her mother and stepfather until the age of 10 when she learned that Castro was her biological father.
She recounted that her past memories still haunted her. When referring to Castro, she called him by his name rather than as her father.
“In the late 1980s, I became a dissident, I mean, an open dissident… So I was very afraid. I worried about my daughter, worried that something might happen to her,” Fernández said.
“I was a dissident back then, so it was a double burden for her. She was still a teenager, and we were in what was called the ‘Special Period.'”
For decades, Cuba relied heavily on foreign aid primarily from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union provided substantial subsidies until its dissolution in 1991. The end of Soviet aid plunged Cuba into a prolonged economic crisis known as the “Special Period.”
For Fernández, that period meant “many years of real hardship”: no electricity, shortage of food, lack of public transportation, and schools being closed.
“Some say the current situation is worse, but in the 1990s, it was really bad, really terrible,” she said.
When Fernández had the chance to escape, she had to leave her daughter behind and go ahead because she had no choice. With the help of a Spanish tourist who agreed to assist her, she fled Cuba.
She first went to Spain and then obtained political asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. On December 21, 1993, she arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.
A few days later, Reverend Jesse Jackson visited Cuba and successfully persuaded Castro to release Fernández’s daughter. Fernández described it as a “miracle.” Shortly after, she and her daughter were reunited in the United States.
Since the age of 9 or 10, Fernández began to understand the true meaning of communism and revolution. It all began with something called “voluntary work.”
“I told my mom, ‘I don’t want to do voluntary work,'” Fernández recalled. “She said, ‘No, you have to go.'”
Under the regime at the time, including children, all Cubans were required to participate in unpaid voluntary work to support the national economy. These activities were mostly related to agriculture, particularly sugarcane harvesting.
“So I found out in Cuba that so-called voluntary work is the same as forced,” she said.
For her, this was an early lesson in understanding how communists manipulate language to serve the regime.
“I realized early that I had been deceived,” she said.
Fernández learned from her mother at the age of 10 that Castro was her biological father. Until then, she had believed that her mother’s husband, renowned heart specialist Orlando Fernández Ferrer, was her father. Due to laws at the time, she used her stepfather’s surname and did not adopt Castro’s surname.
In the early 1960s, her stepfather left Cuba with her half-sister.
“So I had to write this in my school records and every official document about me, I had to consider my family as traitors,” she said.
She continued to live in Cuba with her mother, but their relationship was tense.
According to Fernández, her mother was one of the initial planners of the Cuban Revolution.
“She was there from the very beginning… from the very beginning of the planning of the revolution,” Fernández said.
Regarding her mother’s loyalty to Castro, Fernández said, “She was always a sympathizer of the king (Castro), a very, very loyal subject to him.”
The Mariel crisis in 1980 was a turning point in Fernández’s life. Also known as the Mariel boatlift, it was a massive exodus of Cubans seeking asylum due to an economic crisis following incidents at the Peruvian embassy in Havana, causing over 10,000 Cubans to seek refuge. In response, Castro opened the port of Mariel, allowing people to leave.
Between April and October 1980, around 125,000 Cubans fled to the United States from Mariel.
The Cuban regime labeled those leaving as “worms” and “traitors,” organizing thugs to intimidate and harass those attempting to leave.
Witnessing these events further fueled Fernández’s skepticism towards the regime.
“People were incited to beat, insult, humiliate those who wanted to leave the country, and even in some cases, to kill them,” she said. “For me, seeing people treated like that by the authorities was a very, very brutal turning point that left me overwhelmed with pain.”
In 2014, Fernández returned to Havana. After 21 years, she obtained permission from the Cuban authorities to visit her critically ill mother in the hospital.
Since then, she has not returned to Cuba. However, like many Cuban-Americans, she hopes to return to Cuba after the collapse of the regime.
Fernández has lost contact with her family, including her uncle, former leader Raúl Castro, who is now 94 years old.
“One of the greatest tragedies in Cuba… is how this insane society tears families apart in the most brutal way. So if you disagree with them, you become an enemy,” she said. “It’s awful. It was like that from the beginning.”
The Cuban Revolution began in 1953 as an armed uprising that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973). On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro took power and quickly turned Cuba into a communist state.
Since then, more than a dozen U.S. presidents have attempted to influence, change, or overthrow the Cuban regime. The U.S. has imposed economic embargoes and sanctions on Cuba since 1960, intensifying over the years. Other measures included the Bay of Pigs invasion led by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 (which ended in failure), expelling Cuba from the Organization of American States, and implementing travel bans.
In recent weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that Cuba may be the next target. Following the arrest of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on January 3 and an attack on Iran on February 28, Trump said on March 29, “It’s a country that is in a total downward spiral, and they’re going to be the next one… We’re very much going to help some people there when that happens.”
After the U.S. arrest of Maduro, Venezuela stopped supplying oil to Cuba, plunging the country into one of the most severe economic crises in decades.
Due to frequent power outages, severe food shortages, limited access to medicines, etc., Cuba has seen widespread protests.
However, Fernández pointed out that meaningful change within Cuba is unlikely in the near future. She explained that the communist system remains deeply entrenched, power is highly concentrated, and many of the original leaders are still in power, despite some having passed away.
After leaving Havana, Fernández became a staunch advocate for freedom for her homeland. In 1998, she published a memoir titled “Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba” (1998). She mentioned that over the years, she had faced some obstacles in her work in the U.S.
Fernández recently participated in a documentary called “Revolution’s Daughter,” which will premiere in Miami on April 10. In recent years, she has chosen to keep away from the media.
“I’ve been silent for many, many years,” she said. “I feel like I’ve said all I had to say.”