Alina Fernandez, author of Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba and often referred to as “the rebellious daughter of Fidel Castro,” has traveled to Havana to be with her mother, who is seriously ill. It is her first trip back since 1993, when she left the Cuba.

Max Lesnik, a Miamian who has friends high in the Cuban government and regularly travels to Cuba, reported in his El Duende column Tuesday that Fernandez, 58 and a Miami radio personality, has been spotted in Havana. The visit by Fernandez, a regular and strident critic of Castro and his government, could mark another advance in the long-hostile relations between the Cuban government and Cubans abroad who oppose the communist system.

Her visit was presumed to have been approved by the Cuban government, whose security services control all who enter and leave the nation. Among other recent visitors have been wealthy exile businessmen Paul Cejas, Carlos Saladrigas, and Alfie Fanjul.

In her 1998 autobiography, Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba, Fernandez criticized her father as a distant dictator and wrote that she was closer to his brother, current Cuba ruler Raúl Castro, describing him as a good family man.

“He was the person to whom you could go to and ask for help every time you had a practical problem,” she added in a 2008 interview with Foreign Policy magazine. On personal issues, she added, “Fidel was totally unhelpful.”

[. . .] Fernandez was born in 1956 after Revuelta, a Havana beauty then married to Orlando Fernandez, had an affair with Fidel Castro, then a young revolutionary and lawyer married to Mirta Diaz-Balart.

She was raised by her mother but knew from the age of 10 that Castro was her father and worked variously as a model in a combination clothing shop-nightclub in Havana and as public-relations director for a clothing line.

[. . .] Fernandez moved to Miami with her daughter, Alina “Mumín” Salgado. Fernandez wrote columns for El Nuevo Herald from 2009-2010, and for many years hosted a program on WQBA radio called Simplemente Alina (Simply Alina). She now has a short segment weekdays during the 3-5 pm slot on WWFE-670 AM.

Juanita Castro, sister of Fidel and Raúl, won a $45,000 judgment against Fernández in a Spanish court, arguing that the autobiography’s portrayal of the Castros’ parents, Angel Castro and Lina Ruz, libeled the family. [. . .]

For full article, see http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/05/4273966/fidel-castros-daughter-alina-fernandez.html#emlnl=The_Americas