Juanita Castro

Last updated

Juanita Castro
Born
Juana de la Caridad Castro Ruz

(1933-05-06)6 May 1933
Birán, Holguín Province, Cuba
Died4 December 2023(2023-12-04) (aged 90)
Miami, Florida, US
Citizenship
  • Cuba
  • United States (from 1984)
Occupations
  • Activist
  • writer
Parent
Relatives

Juana de la Caridad "Juanita" Castro Ruz ( /ˈkæstroʊ/ KASS-troh, Latin American Spanish: [ˈxwanaðelakaɾiˈða(ð)xwaˈnitaˈkastɾoˈrus] ; 6 May 1933 – 4 December 2023) was a Cuban-American activist and writer, as well as the sister of Fidel and Raúl, both former presidents of Cuba, and Ramón, a key figure of the Cuban Revolution. After collaborating with the Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba in 1964, she lived in the United States until her death.

Contents

Early life

Juana de la Caridad Castro Ruz was born in Birán, near Mayarí, in what is now known as the province of Holguín on 6 May 1933. [1] [2] She was the fourth child of Ángel Castro y Argiz and Lina Ruz González and had three brothers — Ramón, Fidel, and Raúl — and three sisters — Angelita, Emma, and Agustina. [1] Lina Ruz González was Ángel Castro's cook; he was married to another woman when Juanita and her older brothers were born. [1]

Castro also had five half-siblings: Lidia, Pedro Emilio, Manuel, Antonia, and Georgina, who were raised by Ángel Castro's first wife Maria Luisa Argota, as well as another half-brother, Martín, from her father's relationship with a farmhand. [1]

Politics

Juanita Castro was active in the Cuban revolution, buying weapons for the 26th of July movement during their campaign against Fulgencio Batista. [3] In 1958, she traveled to the US to raise funds to support the insurgent movement. [3] After the revolution, Juanita felt betrayed by the growing influence of Cuban communists in the Cuban government. [4]

Fidel and Raúl's government policies clashed with family interests. When the two revolutionaries insisted on including the family plantation in their agrarian reform program to limit private land ownership, their older brother Ramón, who had been maintaining the property, angrily exploded, "Raúl is a dirty little Communist. Some day I am going to kill him." [3]

In this climate, Juanita Castro started collaborating with, and receiving paychecks from, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after being recruited by someone close to her brother Fidel. [5] She later reported that the CIA "wanted to talk to me because they had interesting things to tell me, and interesting things to ask me, such as if I was willing to take the risk, if I was ready to listen to them... I was rather shocked, but anyway I said yes". [5] As part of her work with the CIA, she was credited with helping at least 200 people leave Cuba in the immediate post-revolutionary period. [6] Time magazine reported that "after the mother Lina Ruz died in 1963, there was a violent episode when Fidel decided to expropriate the family land once and for all. Juanita started selling the cattle; Fidel flew into a rage, denounced her as a 'counterrevolutionary worm,' and rushed to the [family's] farm." [7]

Emigration

In 1964, Castro left Cuba for Mexico, staying with her sister Emma, who had married a Mexican man in Cuba and emigrated there. [1] Upon her arrival, she called a press conference and announced that she had defected from Cuba. "I cannot longer remain indifferent to what is happening in my country," she said. "My brothers Fidel and Raúl have made it an enormous prison surrounded by water. The people are nailed to a cross of torment imposed by international Communism." [3]

In 1998, she filed a lawsuit in Spain against her niece Alina Fernández, the illegitimate daughter of her brother Fidel Castro, claiming that she had been libeled in some passages in Fernández's autobiography, Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba (1998). [8] She claimed the book defamed her family: "People who were eating off Fidel's plate yesterday come here and want money and power, so they say whatever they want, even if it's not true." [8] A Spanish court ordered Fernández and her publisher, Plaza & Janes, a Barcelona-based division of Random House, to pay Castro the equivalent of US$45,000. [8]

On 25 October 2009, Juanita Castro told Univision's WLTV-23 that she had initially supported her brother's 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship but quickly became disillusioned. [5] Her home became a sanctuary for anti-Communists before she fled the island. [5] In the interview, she said she was approached by the CIA. [9] [10] [5]

Later life and death

After settling in Miami in 1964, Castro opened a pharmacy called Mini Price in 1973. [11] She became a naturalized US citizen in 1984. [2] In December 2006, she sold her pharmacy business to CVS Pharmacy. [11]

Castro published her autobiography in Spanish in 2009 as Fidel y Raúl, mis hermanos. La historia secreta ("Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers: The Secret History"). [5] It was co-written with Mexican journalist María Antonieta Collins. [5]

Castro died at a hospital in Miami, Florida, on 4 December 2023, aged 90. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fidel Castro</span> Leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

María Antonieta Collins Flores is a Mexican journalist, television host and author. She is the winner of four Emmy Awards and the Edward Murrow Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raúl Castro</span> Leader of Cuba from 2011 to 2021

Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, and President of Cuba between 2008 and 2018, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alina Fernández</span> Cuban political critic (born 1956)

Alina Fernández Revuelta is a Cuban anti-communist activist. She is the daughter of Fidel Castro and Natalia Revuelta Clews. She is one of the best-known Cuban critics of the government of Cuba and her father's and uncle's rule, where she lived until 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luis Posada Carriles</span> Cuban terrorist and CIA agent

Luis Clemente Posada Carriles was a Cuban exile militant and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. He was considered a terrorist by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Government of Cuba, among others.

Mirta Francisca de la Caridad Díaz-Balart y Gutiérrez is a Cuban who was the first wife of Fidel Castro. They married in 1948, had one son together, and divorced in 1955.

Delfín Fernández is a former Cuban spy who spent 15 years working for the Cuban counterintelligence Department 11 with the codename Agent Otto. He defected from Cuba and moved to Spain in 1999. He settled in Spain for five years, becoming one of Europe's most successful bodyguards. In 2005 Fernández moved to Miami, Florida and as of 2006 he was waiting to get U.S. residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Ángel María Bautista Castro y Argiz was a Spanish-born Cuban farmer and businessman who was the father of Cuban leaders Fidel, Raúl and Ramón Castro.

The 2006–2008 Cuban transfer of presidential duties was the handover of the title of president and presidential duties from longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl Castro, the next-in-line-of-succession person in Cuba, following Fidel's operation and recovery from an undisclosed digestive illness believed to be diverticulitis. Although Raúl Castro exercised the duties of president, Fidel Castro retained the title of President of the Council of State of Cuba and President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, during this period.

Ramón Castro is the name of:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramón Castro Ruz</span> Revolutionary from Cuba

Ramón Eusebio Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and activist. He was the eldest brother of Fidel and Raúl Castro and a key figure of the Cuban Revolution.

José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera was a Cuban politician. He was the country's Minister of Health from 2004 to 2010. He previously served as the final Cuban ambassador to the Soviet Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jorge Mas Canosa</span> American businessman

Jorge Lincoln Mas Canosa was a Cuban-American businessman who founded the Cuban American National Foundation and MasTec, a publicly traded company. Regarded within the United States as a powerful lobbyist on Cuban and anti-Castro political positions, he was labeled a "counterrevolutionary" by the Cuban Communist Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marita Lorenz</span> German spy and lover of Fidel Castro (1939–2019)

Ilona Marita Lorenz was a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polita Grau</span>

Polita Grau was the First Lady of Cuba, a Cuban political prisoner, and the "godmother" of Operation Peter Pan, also known as Operación Pedro Pan, a program to help children leave Cuba. Operation Peter Pan involved the Roman Catholic Church and Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh from 1960 to 1962, which were involved in encouraging Cuban parents to send their children to live with U.S families to rescue them from Communism.

Humberto Sorí Marín was a Cuban revolutionary. After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, he served as minister of agriculture, but resigned in May 1959. Shortly before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, he was arrested after landing in Cuba with arms and explosives, and was executed after the invasion.

José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre, a Cuban priest from the parish of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús, in Santiago de Cuba, is best known for his strongly worded open letter in 2009 to Cuban President Raúl Castro. The letter condemns what Conrado says are the social problems, the restrictions on liberty and the increasing threats and interrogations that have been directed at his parishioners. Conrado had written a similar open letter to Fidel Castro in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Louise Bardach</span>

Ann Louise Bardach [A.L. Bardach] is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death and state funeral of Fidel Castro</span> Details on the death and funeral of Fidel Castro

90-year old former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Council of State, Fidel Castro died of natural causes at 22:29 (CST) on the evening of 25 November 2016. His brother, the then-President of the State Council and then-First Secretary Raúl Castro, made an announcement about his death on state television. One of the most controversial political leaders of his era, Castro both inspired and dismayed people across the world during his lifetime. The London Observer stated that he proved to be "as divisive in death as he was in life", and that the only thing that his "enemies and admirers" agreed upon was that he was "a towering figure" in world affairs who "transformed a small Caribbean island into a major force in world affairs". The Daily Telegraph noted that across the world he was "either praised as a brave champion of the people, or derided as a power-mad dictator." Castro's body was cremated and his ashes were interred in Santiago de Cuba on 4 December 2016, and hundreds of thousands of Cubans commemorated the event.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Bardach, Ann Louise (2002). Cuba Confidential. University of Michigan. pp. 57–59. ISBN   9780375504891. OCLC   1117447686.
  2. 1 2 "Juanita Castro, hermana de Fidel Castro y exiliada cubana, muere a los 90 años en Miami" (in Spanish). El Diario NY. 5 December 2023. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "The Bitter Family". Time . 10 July 1964. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2008.
  4. ↑ Cuba Confidential by Ann Lousie Bardach, page 57
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Castro's Sister Says She Worked With the C.I.A." The New York Times. Reuters. 26 October 2009. Archived from the original on 5 March 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  6. ↑ "Fidel Castro's sister: I worked with CIA in Cuba". Reuters. 26 October 2009. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2009.
  7. ↑ "The Bitter Family". Time . 10 July 1964. Archived from the original on 22 October 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2008.
  8. 1 2 3 Pablo Bachelet (9 August 2005). "Post-Castro Cuba will be 'a big mess,' speaker says". The Miami Herald . Cuba Net. Archived from the original on 1 November 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2008.
  9. ↑ Wides-Munoz, Laura (26 October 2009). "Castro's sister says she collaborated with CIA". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 1 September 2015. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  10. ↑ "Castro's sister 'spied for CIA'". BBC News. 26 October 2009. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 27 October 2009.
  11. 1 2 "Castro's sister shuts Miami pharmacy". The Miami Herald. 28 February 2007. Archived from the original on 7 June 2013. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
  12. ↑ Muere en Miami Juanita Castro, hermana de Fidel Castro Archived 4 December 2023 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.