Just When You Thought Cuba Might Ever Get Rid Of Fidel
Huffington Post: If you thought Cuba might one day be free of Castro, Ann Louise Bardach has another message for you. The following excerpts from her new book, Without Fidel : A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington (Scribner) and the family trees explain what's coming. Fidel's tree is full of fun--hook ups galore. Raul's tree means business: these are the people who are ready to step into the job the minute Uncle Fidel passes.
The Family Tree of Fidel Castro
Excerpt from Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington
Part Three: Raul's Reign
A few weeks after the rebels' victory on January 1, 1959, Raul Castro married Vilma Espín Guillois, the daughter of a prominent family in Santiago, Cuba's second largest city and once its capitol. Espín came from privilege, culture and considerable wealth; her father, Jose Espin, an executive at Bacardi Rum. "We had an easy life," Espín told me in 1994, "but we had principles." She did post-graduate work at M.I.T. in chemical engineering in 1955, encouraged by her father who had hoped it would distract her from revolutionary politics. It didn't.
Espin dropped out of M.I.T. after just a few months. On her return to Cuba, she alighted in Mexico City to meet the celebrated revolutionary brother duo, and promptly fell in love with the besotted Raul Castro. After three days with him, Espin returned to Havana as their comrade-in-arms. Later she joined the Castros in the Sierra Maestra. "At the time, I was the head of the underground for all of the province of Oriente, " she told me. "The role of women was very important. Women were tortured, women were assassinated." A close confederate of the martyred revolutionary Frank País, Espín had impeccable revolutionary bona fides. When reminiscing about the revered País, whose photograph hung on the wall just behind her desk, Espín suddenly, and uncharacteristically, broke into tears.
After the Revolution, she founded and served as president of the Women's Federation of Cuba. More significantly, she stepped into the unofficial role as Cuba's First Lady and held that position until her death at 77 on June 18, 2007.
The couple had one son who they named Alejandro in tribute to Fidel's nom de guerre. Alejandro Raul Castro Espin followed his father's footsteps into the Army, rising to the rank of colonel with a vast portfolio that covers both intelligence collection and China. Raul and Vilma also had three daughters. One of Raul's daughters, Mariela, is married to an Italian businessman and regarded as the free spirit of the family. His other two daughters are both married to high ranking officers in the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR). Deborah, their eldest, was given Vilma's revolutionary nom de guerre while their youngest, Nilsa, nicknamed Nilsita, was named in honor of Vilma's beloved, deceased sister, a revolutionary firebrand who took her life in 1963.
Soon after the Revolution, Raúl and his family settled into a sprawling seventh floor apartment in Nuevo Vedado, not far from the historic Colon Cemetery. Later the family moved to a countrified mansion with generous grounds and a coterie of farm animals in Jaimanitas in western Havana known as La Rinconada, not far from Fidel's principal residence. While relatives and foes attest to his love of family, Raúl was hardly the faithful husband. But like his brother Fidel, he conducted his affairs with a degree of courtliness and discretion.
According to relatives of Celia Sanchez, Fidel's political and personal partner until her death in 1980, Raul was the patriarch to a parallel family. A long term affair with a pretty assistant in the FAR begun in the 1960s, they say, produced at least one son named Guillermo in the early 1970s. A light skinned, blond child, Guillermo, would later study medicine, according to the Sanchez relations who met him socially. They also believe that Raul sired a second younger son out of wedlock - though it is unclear whether the boy shared the same mother as Guillermo, or was the son of another liaison.
Raúl would have other significant affairs, including one with a Bulgarian woman who lived in Havana and another with a Colombian nurse. According to a colonel in the FAR, many government elites believed that Raul was involved in the 1980s with Yadira Garcia Vera who became First Secretary of the Communist Party in Matanzas, and later was promoted to Minister of Basic Industry in 2004, and eventually elevated into the Politburo. Another attractive young woman in the Ministry of Commercial Affairs captured Raul's attention in the 1990s. Indeed, Raul's romantic life was not dissimilar to that of his brothers, Fidel and Ramon, or for that matter, their father Angel. He was a Cuban man of a certain generation for whom extra-marital liaisons were almost de riguer. The difference lay in Raul's deeply felt passion for fatherhood and in his esteem for his wife.
By the mid-1980s, Raúl's marriage to Vilma had settled into a familial partnership and friendship. Several insiders said they lived separately for more than 20 years. But throughout his dalliances, he remained deeply respectful towards Espín and her public role as Cuba's First Lady. He was at her side at family celebrations and tragedies, and stood beside her at official events and receptions.
Following her diagnosis of cancer in 2004, Raúl was scrupulously attentive to her needs. Her death in 2007, by all accounts, devastated him. He wept profusely at her memorial in Havana and at the internment of her ashes in Santiago's Mausoleum of the Frank País Second Front. In an ironic bookend, Fidel, who had been too preoccupied to attend Vilma and Raúl's wedding, was too ill to attend her funeral.
The Dynasty
Chapter 12: The Graveyard Shift
Fidel Castro's expressed concerns about "a generational problem" in Cuba's leadership were prescient and all too relevant. Raul Castro has already chosen and prepared his grave site -- outside Santiago where the ashes of his wife were scattered. At the Frank Pais Mausoleum of the Second Front, Raul's name has been embossed on a plaque next to Vilma's, mounted on an immense boulder ringed by royal green palms and the Micara hills.
Sometime in the next decade, most of Fidel and Raul's septuagenarian appointments will be dead or gone. Their governing bunker mentality will presumably exit with them.
However, the Castros remain the dynastic royal family of Cuba. Strategically placed throughout the government's portfolios and ministries are an array of Castro relations - uncles, nieces and cousins - who are well known among the nomenklatura or chattering classes, but not to the average Cuban.
Curiously, none of Fidel's children appear destined for major political careers. Nor have any of his brood gone into the country's Armed Forces. Fidel's brood, according to several accounts, are not especially ambitious with exception of the well-liked Antonio, who heads up the Cuban Baseball League. Inheriting their father's intellectual bent, Fidel's sons have generally favored professions in medicine and the sciences.
The legacy factor is strongest in Raul Castro's clan - whose members can be found in virtually every ministry. At the top of the list would be Raul's son-in -law, Col. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, married to Deborah Castro Espin, and who is the chief executive officer of GAESA, the business arm and cash cow of the Cuban Army. The clout and prestige of Rodriguez, whose own father was a Division General and who now heads the Cuban Defense Information Studies Center, cannot be overestimated. "There are higher ranking generals in the Army but few come close to having his influence," observed military historian, Frank Mora. "He is the most important entrepreneur in the Army."
Raul's daughter, Mariela Castro Espín has stepped into her late mother's role as Cuba's unofficial First Lady. Soon after Vilma's death, she assumed her mother's position as the head of Cuba's Federation of Women and also serves as a spokesperson for the family.
A passionate advocate for gay and transgender rights, she heads the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX). Once the family rebel, Mariela, 47, leans towards progressive liberalism and has chosen a decidedly bohemian lifestyle. She is married to an Italian businessman with whom she has two children; she also has a son from a previous liaison with a Chilean whom she did not marry. She has the perspective of intellectual who has traveled widely and lived abroad.
Her advocacy of homosexual and transgender issues has led many to think she is gay but, by all reports, she is not. She is, however, ambitious and topping her agenda is the legalization of same-sex marriage. High on her agenda is the inclusion of sex change surgery for transgenders in the Cuban health care, notwithstanding critics who point out that the system barely meets basic, minimum needs.
Another of Raul's son-in-law, Alfonsito Fraga, married to Raul's youngest daughter, Nilsa, is also a colonel in the Army and has his own field of influence. Fraga's father is Alfonso Fraga Perez, another Ministry of Interior [MININT] colonel, who served as chief of the US Interests Section in the 1990s. [However, he is not a relation of Mario Fraga who married Fidel and Raul's older sister, Angelita.] Also, worth watching is Marcos Portal, the former Minister of Basic Industries. Portal is quite close to Raul and is, in fact, family. Portal's wife is Tania Fraga Castro, the daughter of Angelita Castro, who herself is a high ranking official in the Ministry of Health.
The surprise player could well be Raúl's own son, Alejandro Raul Castro Espin, a colonel in MININT with a powerful portfolio. The younger Castro heads up intelligence collection and also serves as Cuba's point man and liaison with China. He is an accomplished politician, though very much in the low-profile mold of his father. Down the road, he will likely step into a more public role. He occupies a far more strategic position than his cousin, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, a 60 year old physicist who is a scientific advisor to the Council of State.
Every New Year's Day a caravan of banner-festooned jeeps and trucks leaves Santiago de Cuba, recreating Castro's eight day victory march across the island in 1959. In 2009, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, the Caravan of Victory was slated to be a blow-out, celebratory party. But with Castro confined to his state-of-the-art convalescent suite, the festivities were downgraded to a far more subdued affair.
Standing in for Fidel was his first born child and namesake. As a picture-perfect photogenic 9 year old, Fidelito had been at this father's side during the historic journey that culminated at Camp Columbia, the military barracks in Havana. Father and son have a marked physical resemblance to each other, but in temperament Fidelito is closer to that of his mother. Like her, he has no passion for politics. Nevertheless, he was thrilled to repeat the experience of the caravan, calling it "the happiest day of my life." Still, the differences of a half century were stark.
In 1959, the caravan was surrounded by hordes of jubilant Cubans, which was not the case in 2009. In contrast to his father, his appearance generated no electricity with the small but polite crowds that came out to see him, mostly out of curiosity. In 1959, Fidel Castro assured the cheering throngs that "this is not a dictatorship," promising that "the day that the people do not want us, we shall leave." It was a promise not kept.
The only child not identified on Fidel's Tree is a son known as Fito. According to a former Cuban intelligence defector Roberto Hernández del Llano, Castro fathered a child with the wife of an important government trade official. According to Hernandez, Rosana Rodriguez, the wife of Abraham Masiques had a son named Fito born around 1970, who was in fact Fidel Castro's child.
Loading comments…
The Huffington Post | Amy Hertz
First Posted: 11- 6-09 10:16 AM | Updated: 11- 6-09 02:18 PM