I Was Never the First Lady

by Wendy Guerra

  At the party I took notes on my conversations with the rest of the family. I was able to meet Acacia (Aca) Gloria Gómez Sánchez, “La Pompa,” Marcos Gómez Sánchez, “Chongolo,” the children of Acacia Norma Sánchez Manduley and Delio Gómez Ochoa (commander of the Sierra Maestra). I want my mother’s book to have all of its protagonists’ contradictions; I don’t want a predictable book. I want to expose our internal struggles, our pain, and our proximity to Cuba’s saga. I intend to write it in the next few months, with as many dimensions as the subject of Cuba allows.

  FIDEL’S LITTLE GIRL

  LUJO IS also friends with Alina Fernández, Fidel’s first and only daughter.

  There are many stories about her. It’s said she escaped from Cuba disguised in a blond wig, that Fidel never took care of her, that her mother, Natalia F. Revueltas, was never the First Lady either.

  Why did she never use the Castro surname? What are Fidel’s intimate relationships with women like? How was his relationship with his only daughter, now a mature woman?

  All the answers are there, on the map of her childhood, which took place during the first stage of the Revolution, when Fidel made his home at Celia Sánchez’s house.

  Alina welcomed me politely and with kindness to her lovely home in Miami. She’s an intelligent and beautiful woman. Talking with her was a real journey to the center of the problem: Fidel and his relationships with women.

  ALINA: When I was born, the Revolution hadn’t triumphed yet. I’m making a confession about an unforgivable age. We had a very stable family life. I ate sitting in a high chair. I remember one day I choked on orange juice. I remember the trips to the park. It was a totally different time. We lived at Fifteenth and Fourth in El Vedado. It was a big house, with seven bedrooms, a house belonging to upper-middle-class professionals. My mother was married to Dr. Orlando Fernández Ferrer, who was a cardiologist. My mother worked at Esso as chief of staff. I’m trying to explain that we were working people. In Cuba, our serenity was disturbed by Batista’s coup, which was opposed by a good part of Cuban society. People were against it because we were a republic that was just beginning to deal with its flaws.

  NADIA: How did it affect you as a child? We’re talking about the first few years of your life.

  ALINA: What children feel are the atmospherics, the moods, the emotions of those around them. And that was very evident to me, since I was a child. There was indifference, worry, happiness . . . so many emotions in our home because, in addition to the family, there were people who worked at our house, and, well, all that changed one fine day with the triumph of the Revolution.

  NADIA: Did you feel that this doctor, Orlando Fernández, was your father?

  ALINA: We had this tradition. I remember our front door was frosted, double glass, and he would open it—I’d be waiting for him and would run into his arms. I remember running while still in diapers, running, running, running.

  NADIA: How old were you?

  ALINA: A year. But I have memories from the cradle. He had a clinic at the house. There was a fluorescent lamp, and he’d sit his patients in front of it, and you could see their heart beat. It was like discovering a different world. I loved being there, in his office. I believe that’s why I fell in love with medicine and why it’s what I studied. All that changed (my memory is totally visual) when, instead of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons, TV began to show advancing—that’s what they were doing—bearded men hanging off Sherman tanks, with their guns and necklaces and all that. I think they were driving toward Havana for, like, eight days, and then one night the main bearded guy showed up in our living room. From then on, everything fell apart. My life changed like the life of the country, very abruptly.

  NADIA: Did the doctor know you weren’t his daughter?

  ALINA: Yes, he knew.

  NADIA: Did you call him “Dad”?

  ALINA: You know, I don’t really remember, but I’m sure I did. I was telling you my parents met in the context of conspiracy and opposition to Batista. My mother had given keys to the house to the three main emerging leaders of the rebel forces.

  NADIA: So he used that key to come into the house?

  ALINA: Yes, but look . . . Fidel entered Havana on January 8th, but as far as I was concerned, he leapt from the TV screen into our living room.

  NADIA: Was that the first time you met? What do you remember about this moment?

  ALINA: I remember cigar smoke. I remember a very big person. I remember a gift he brought me: a baby doll like those we’d had before, but this one was dressed like him, like Fidel, with hair stuck on his face, a beard . . . That toy was his alter ego.

  NADIA: When you saw him for the first time, were you impressed by the uniform? Were you impressed by his height?

  ALINA: No, I don’t remember being impressed at all. I believe what children want is to be held; anything can make them happy. I remember I peeled the hair off the doll’s face.

  NADIA: He’d gone to see your mother and the doctor, to talk to them?

  ALINA: I imagine he was there to talk to them.

  NADIA: And the doctor? Your sister? What happened to them?

  ALINA: We moved out of the house, and my father and my sister began to fade a bit.

  NADIA: Were there plans for you to move in with Fidel?

  ALINA: Well, I didn’t have any plans. That was a question for the adults—I was just a girl.

  NADIA: Wasn’t it traumatic to move with your mother and leave the doctor, whom you saw as your father? You talk about this very casually.

  ALINA: No, because we moved to a fabulous place in front of the playita at Sixteenth Street, a lovely place for children, because when you went down the stairs, there was a natural pool off the rocks. Next door, the neighbors had a lion and a monkey as pets. They belonged to the owner of the Sierra Maestra building (the former Rosita de Hornedo hotel), and he was always very generous with children.

  NADIA: Didn’t you miss your sister and the man you’d known as your father?

  ALINA: Children adapt very easily. I don’t remember missing him. And everything was so traumatic anyway. Also, right about then they’d enrolled me in a school I hated with all my heart. Pediatricians always say that if you’re going to make a change, like changing a kid’s pacifier, for example, just do it.

  NADIA: So that was your exile to the beach, without your first father and sister?

  ALINA: Yes, it was very abrupt. Perhaps if we’d stayed in the other house the absence would have been more noticeable.

  NADIA: So at the time, it was just your Tata, your mother, and the sea?

  ALINA: Well, Fidel visited late at night, always very late, but that ended at a certain point.

  NADIA: When did you become aware of your family again?

  ALINA: The truth is I had a family for a very short time. At that time in Cuba, if you had a relative or someone very close who’d left Cuba, it was highly stigmatized, and you had to report it.

  NADIA: When you started at this school, did your classmates know who your parents were?

  ALINA: After three days or a week everyone knew . . .

  NADIA: Everyone except you.

  ALINA: Except me. Just an innocent walking through life. But yes, little by little I realized what was happening because it was very obvious. Children tell everything. Children repeat everything they hear at home.

  NADIA: With all the political fervor of the Revolution in education and the centrality of Fidel in the schools—the Pioneers wrote compositions and odes to Fidel; the murals featured him; he was in the morning papers, in political songs, everywhere. When that happened, didn’t it occur to you to tell your friends Fidel was visiting your mother?

  ALINA: Well, people knew. Slowly I began to understand, but very slowly.

  NADIA: Did you ever wonder why Fidel came to visit?

  ALINA: No. The truth is, his visits were very pleasant. He was great at playing children’s games, especially games that involved his hands. And it was so late. He
’d come at the small hours of the morning. I loved it.

  NADIA: What did you play with him?

  ALINA: Jacks and pick-up-sticks.

  NADIA: At what point did you find out he was your father? Did you hear it from the doctor?

  ALINA: No, no, he wouldn’t have had a chance to tell me—remember, back then, everyone who left was a traitor. I never heard from him again. Remember that we lived obsessed with everything the “neighbor across the street” was doing; there was no communication. Everyone was leaving. There was always a reason to leave, to not be there.

  NADIA: So you were ten when your mother decided to talk to you about this. Do you remember how the conversation went with your mother about your true parent?

  ALINA: I don’t remember it very well, but she had a very interesting room—a room like a suite. Before you were actually in the house proper there was, like, a living room. It had a small sofa, a recliner, a record player. It was very nice, and you could talk there. It must have been like that. But it didn’t surprise me at all.

  NADIA: Why not?

  ALINA: It didn’t surprise me because you feel things or know them already. I believe children have an overdeveloped instinct we lose when we grow up.

  NADIA: When you saw him, did you feel that thing from the soap operas, what the characters refer to as “the call of blood.”

  ALINA: Well, what I remember is his presence in my house, and he was a very tender and very pleasant man. Don’t forget—he was also the hero of the moment.

  NADIA: How did you take the news?

  ALINA: I was ten years old, an emerging adolescent, so the news brought me relief, because I didn’t have to keep saying my father was “a worm,” a traitor. It didn’t really surprise me; it relieved me, but I also knew it wasn’t going to do me any good. It didn’t change my life at all.

  NADIA: From then on, after learning he was your father, did you see him more often? Did you talk about this among yourselves?

  ALINA: He came, he visited frequently, but then he could disappear for a year.

  NADIA: During your childhood he lived in Celia Sánchez’s house. Did you ever meet her?

  ALINA: Never. Not once.

  NADIA: Was there ever a conversation between you that was transcendent, a cardinal conversation between you?

  ALINA: No. By that time he was really into his monologues.

  NADIA: Why don’t you use his last name?

  ALINA: When I was on the verge of adolescence, that relationship was more of a problem than a solution. First, a law had to be changed, and so the Family Code was passed. But by no means could you make that kind of name change in the fifties—that didn’t happen in Cuba. By the time it was possible, I didn’t want it, even though the law had been changed so I could.

  NADIA: He changed it for you?

  ALINA: Well, that’s why he changed it. The person in charge of making the change was the minister of justice, Alfredo Yabur, but when it became possible, I didn’t want it. Going to school and saying, “Don’t call me this anymore, call me this,” seemed ridiculous to me. Besides, I always remembered Dr. Orlando with great affection, because somehow I understood everything this man had suffered. He must have suffered a lot, a whole lot. Later, in time, I was able to resume, to reestablish my relationship with my sister, and I realized I’d been right.

  NADIA: Knowing all this, did you feel you were being watched?

  ALINA: I come from a family of matriarchs; my grandmother was such a beautiful woman that when she went to the theater, they put a spotlight on her. Naty was very beautiful too. If your mother took you to school in a Mercedes-Benz and your father came looking for you while wearing a linen uniform, you were already a freak, and I was always the freak.

  NADIA: Were there ever bodyguards at the door during Fidel’s visits?

  ALINA: No, no, no, there were never bodyguards at the door. The only thing was when he came over there was always a great display of security. Then, well, people in the neighborhood found out, and they wanted to talk to him about the cousin who had been shot—all their tragedies. There was also that thing about “If you want, I can give him a letter” . . . I was always in the yard, and I read all those.

  NADIA: How old were you then?

  ALINA: Five. It all seemed surreal, because you have to be very desperate to give those kinds of letters to a five-year-old girl.

  NADIA: You didn’t use his last name because it was uncomfortable for you, but you were his only daughter . . . and the family, how did the family behave in the midst of such a strong presence? Did you sense any similarities?

  ALINA: I’d have liked to be like my mother, who was a beautiful woman. My grandmother hated Fidel; she called him the devil. There was always a duality of emotions in the house. It has always been obvious to me that my mother loved him. When he came to visit her, there was a light in her eyes.

  NADIA: Do you remember any special gift Fidel gave you?

  ALINA: Well, I remember once, after he came back from the Soviet Union, he brought back a bear they’d given him, and he told me the bear was mine and I could visit the bear at any of his houses.

  NADIA: A few more questions about your family, your father’s side. You’re the only girl in the family. Did you ever see your brothers as a child?

  ALINA: I have two older brothers. I finally met them when I was eleven years old. At some point he told me I had another brother besides Fidelito. Then I went to see this other brother, just him. It was a very pleasant surprise. His mother was named Amalia and she was very much a housewife, very dedicated to her home, very humble. I loved going there. Fidel isn’t that much into family; the one who is, is Raúl. I spent many weekends with him.

  NADIA: So it was Raúl who took care of you?

  ALINA: Not just me, all of us.

  NADIA: Do you remember your cousins, Raúl’s kids?

  ALINA: How could I not remember them! I loved my oldest cousin—Deborah—so much. She was like a doll and had almost white hair. I used to look for her after school and then we’d leave together.

  NADIA: Did you feel this was your family, Alina?

  ALINA: Yes and no. Sometimes I slept with Vilma and Raúl when I stayed with them. I didn’t want to go to Varadero for long, but I always had a place there with them. In different ways, I thought of them as family, not so much in other ways.

  NADIA: Aren’t you afraid of not belonging to anything?

  ALINA: I’ve never belonged to anything, and that gives me a lot of freedom. First of all, I’m a child out of wedlock—nowadays no one cares, but in the fifties that was a thing.

  NADIA: Did you feel lonely or weird, humiliated?

  ALINA: I must have felt lonely, weird, and humiliated, but that’s just part of personal growth. And since there wasn’t any structure back then, everything seemed normal.

  NADIA: Do you remember your grandmother Lina, Fidel’s mother?

  ALINA: I only met my grandmother Lina two or three times, but I remember her at the naval hospital before she died. She was a woman with a lot of energy, and you had to ask, “How did this tiny woman produce this family of giants?”

  NADIA: They named you Alina?

  ALINA: It must have been my mother, because at that time Fidel was in Mexico.

  NADIA: I think you didn’t have issues with Fidel, the man who showed up at night, but you did with the man who ran the country. That began in your adolescence, right?

  ALINA: Well, it was also about my mother’s suffering and how he disappeared. I grew up without him . . . It never crossed my mind: “Oh, I have to call Fidel and tell him this or that.” I didn’t have his phone number; it had to be done through a third person. I think I realized very early he wasn’t someone you could count on for anything. He wasn’t going to explain my math homework to me because you can’t do that at two in the morning.

  NADIA: Did you call him Papi or Fidel?

  ALINA: I called him Fidel.

  NADIA: Do you call him Castro now?

&
nbsp; ALINA: I call him Fidel.

  NADIA: Let’s say you had the normal tensions teenagers have with their parents, but you couldn’t discuss them with him, tell him about your suffering.

  ALINA: I mostly suffered for my mother, who longed for recognition and social status. I’d have liked to have an ordinary father like everyone else, and grandparents and normal things, but none of that happened.

  NADIA: Would you like to see him now, at the end of his life? Talk to him about all this?

  ALINA: I’m convinced love is something that must be given in life, consciously, but that it’s also a matter of habit, and I never had that due to the circumstances. Now, there’s a rather exotic spiritual theory or belief that claims you choose the womb in which to come into life, so obviously it must be true I got myself into this trouble.

  NADIA: When you had your daughter, how did you feel having her in your arms?

  ALINA: I thought there must be something inherent in motherhood that is unconditional. I remember in delivery, apart from enormous relief, I considered the circumstances and the moment in which I’d brought this girl into the world. But she’s never had any problems, so I consoled myself very quickly. Mumín is much more mature than I am. She was giving lessons in maturity from the moment she began to speak.

  NADIA: Do you remember any stories about your daughter and Fidel?

  ALINA: Well, we’re talking about 1989, which was a year of reflection for many people, and which led to the fall of the Soviet empire, which had a very big impact on Cuba. The structural errors became evident, because when you stop being subsidized, the gaps appear, and they were deep. At the time, I was friends with a foreign journalist. I’d tell him what was going on in my head. I was involved with the dissident movement. That Christmas, in 1989, a soldier showed up wanting to talk to my mother and not to me. I thought they wanted to prep my mother to raise my daughter because they were going to send me to one of those places where people are calm and quiet—and unable to discern—but that wasn’t it. We were preparing for Armageddon, but that wasn’t it either. According to this messenger, the comandante was concerned because his granddaughter was about to turn fifteen and he wanted to know what she wanted in order to send her a gift. It had nothing to do with my passionate political activism or with punishment.