Fidel Castro's daughter speaks at Weber State University

Jesus Lopez Jr.

OGDEN -- Alina Fernandez is the daughter of the Cuban revolution, almost in a literal sense.
Some of her earliest memories were of late-night visits from a bearded man in military fatigues, sitting behind a cloud of dense blue cigar smoke.
Fernandez, author of the memoir "Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba" (St. Martin's Press, 1998), spoke Thursday in a ballroom of the Shepherd Union Building at Weber State University as part of the Convocation Lecture Series.
The event had to move from the Wildcat Theater, which seats 300 people, to accommodate an overflowing crowd of more than 500.
To help the audience understand her fellow Cubans, Fernandez led them through a series of facts and anecdotes, presented with wit and humor. She said she did not come with an agenda -- she just wanted to share with the audience the importance of freedom, something that she feels is as necessary to life as air is.
Near the beginning of her lecture. Fernandez said, "I come from a country where the revolution is always continuous."
Most revolutions last for a short period of time, Fernandez said, and she asked the crowd how it would be if the French Revolution, with all its guillotining, continued for 50 years.
To keep the mood light, she went straight into the gossip, as she referred to it, discussing the converging paths that led to her mother and Fidel Castro meeting and having an affair.
While still a baby, she was unaware of the rapid changes going on around her, until one day, Uncle Scrooge, his nephew Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse disappeared from her television screen forever. They were replaced by the hairy man, who later made those late-night visits, giving long-winded speeches.
"We have had that bearded man on TV for more than half a century," Fernandez said. She became part of a generation that prayed to the television nightly for the bearded man to stop talking and for the cartoons to return.
Along with the cartoons, Christmas, religion and music were all dismissed as capitalist ideas, she recounted, giving a quick how-to on creating a successful dictatorship. Former military, intellectuals and artists disappeared into the countryside or were executed. The man she believed to be her father and her sister were forced into exile and branded as traitors to the revolution.
"A revolution becomes a dictatorship when it gets involved in your personal life," Fernandez said, and when it becomes a crime to do anything about it.
Things continued to get worse, Fernandez said. After her relationship to Castro was officially acknowledged to the public when she was a pre-teen, people would line up outside the door, petitioning her help -- help she said she was powerless to give.
Cuba itself became a player in world politics. She said Castro and his people tried to spread their influence in many areas of the world, including Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
She tried hard to distance herself from her powerful father, keeping her original name. After four failed marriages, she devoted herself to raising her daughter.
"It's bad when you try to rebel against yourself," Fernandez said. "Guys, don't do that."
In the 1980s she became a dissident, a move that got her branded a traitor. After the Iron Curtain fell and support from the Soviet Union dried up, she saw opportunities in Cuba for her daughter dry up as well. She escaped from the island nation, folllowed by her daughter shortly after, and eventually settled in Miami.
She said she is unsure about the future of her homeland. Castro was president for about 50 years and has handed over power to his brother, Raul, who she believes is a better administrator willing to make certain economic changes to keep himself in power longer, but who has so far done nothing.
In the end, she believes change will come when the Castros leave power.
"It has been run by one family that has run that country like a farm," Fernandez said.