Customer Reviews

Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have lived in Miami 39 years. Every day I think of Cuba, talk about Cuba and hear the exile's radio. I thought I knew a lot about life in Cuba - the missery, the control - but never, imagined how horrible life could be for the cubans - Alina's description is a revelation. Life put her in a difficult - to say the least - position. I'm happy she was able to leave hell behind!

alina fernandez must have nerves made of pig iron to have survived the life she did in cuba as a young girl. her book paints a picture of a world so alien and biased that i feel i have finally read what modern day cuba is all about.

This is a great book, written by Fidel Castro's own daughter. Would you question her authenticity? I think not. Knowing the extent that the Cuban government's propaganda campaign will go to in order to discredit her, would you think that another reader named Cube could be spouting out the same rhetoric?

Cube, you are a bigger clown than Castro. You regurgitate the same excuses used on the island. Everyone knows that the United States is only 35% of the world's economy and Cuba trades with the rest of the world - do the math yourself. Everyone knows that the reason Cubans are starving is because all funds are diverted to exporting communism: in Colombia (FARC), in Venezuela (Hugo Chavez), in Brazil (Lula) in Nicaragua (Sandinistas), in El Salvador (FMLN), in Africa, in Vietnam, in Grenada, and in the United States (wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald distributing Pro-Castro leaflets just before Kennedy was assassinated?). The planes shot down in 1996 were flying in international waters looking for Cubans, like yourself, who chose to leave the island on a raft rather than live under this regime. You yourself live in Brazil - did you leave for a better life, or are you working for the Cuban government like your father? The percentages you quote ("95% of the population was starving, living in the streets, illiterate, poorly educated, had no job opportunity, etc. the other 5% lived in mansions, ate the finest food, bathed everyday, slept on a matress, etc") closely resemble what is presently happening in Cuba. Under Batista, the 5% represented wealthy land owners; under Castro, that 5% represents government officials.

Universal health care in Cuba translates to a lack of medical supplies - try and find gauze for your wounds or stitches for your surgery. Education is simply indoctrination. There exists no access to outside news agencies (the only news in Cuba is the official government news agency). Try and find a book written by George Orwell (himself an admitted socialist) or better yet, find a book by Ayn Rand. What a wonderful education system that jails individuals for up to 30 years simply for possessing books like these. In Oliver Stone's movie, Castro proudly states that "in Cuba, even our prostitutes have College Degrees." Ever wonder why someone with a college degree would have to turn to prostitution?

The true prostitutes in Cuba are those who relinquish their souls to this hateful ideology called 'communism.' It has failed everywhere, and Alina Fernandez provides an incredible insight into the results of this antiquated political system. The book is titled, "Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba," not "An Exile's Memoir of a Poor Father."

It's amazing how detailed Alina gets about her upbringing, her 'father' and the rollercoaster lifestyle she endured while living under her 'father's' reign. To get an idea of what Castro has done and what he is doing, especially to his offsprings is unreal. This is a book one can't put down. I don't think it had much publicity and it's underated.

I admire Alina's honesty about herself, although I do wonder if she was quite as forceful presenting people's concerns to her father as she says. She paints a compelling picture of her father and of the complexities and inconsistencies of the society he has created, with the at least passive consent of the Cuban people. True, her writing is annoyingly surrealistic, but what she writes is valuable, if one can get past the way she writes it.

Alina Fernandez has quite a story to tell. Not only does she provide an insider's view of life in the prison nation of Cuba, she offers a first hand account of growing up illegitimate with a biological father who had little time or interest in his inconvenient offspring.

The Cuban existence she portrays is bleak and empty. Under Castro's domination, a zeitgeist of amorality has entrapped Cuba and its innocent citizens in a web where dreams don't come true. Divorce and abortion are rampant and illicit sex begins at a very young age. Alina shows how Castro's officially imposed atheism enslaved the populace and stands as a constant de facto assault on the family structure. Parental rights are nonexistent, because children are only allowed to see their mothers and fathers once a month. To illustrate the country's miasma, she tells of having to wait five years to acquire a used toilet.

While she thoroughly documents Fidel's many faults from his murderous rampages to his unsatable sex drive, this autobiography never stoops to the level of a "Daddy Dearest" style hatchet job. Alina is equally up front about her own deficiencies that include a string of failed marriages-although that has tragically become the norm in much of Cuban society. The end shows her transformation with not only her escape to freedom but the conversion to Christianity of her teenage daughter. The original version ended with an open letter to the despot asking him to legalize Christmas again-a rare concession that has actually been granted.

While she is now a resident of Spain, Alina spent considerable time in the United States this year unsuccessfully fighting to have a common sense approach applied toward the case of poor Elian Gonzalez whose mother valiantly lost her life getting him to freedom only to have her sacrifice obliterated by the gestapo tactics of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno. This book provides an extensive look into life of entropy the lawless raid returned him to. If more Americans could comprehend Alina's story, Elian would not have been evicted and Clinton and Reno would be subjected to appropriate criminal penalties.

I found Alina's book somewhat hard to follow at times. However, I found Cuba somewhat hard to understand. Having traveled there, Castro certainly does not need a book by his daughter to discredit himself. The country is the pits. It speaks for itself. Castro is an unintelligent clown. The embargo is nothing but an excuse by Cubans to explain the starvation and oppression I saw in Bayamo and Santiago de Cuba. A complete police state. I have travelled other communist countries that we have not embargoed and found the same conditions. Wake up cubans, you have nothing to lose but the ties that bind you. The ties just happens to be a man named Fidel Castro and his henchmen.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the reality about life in Castro's Cuba.

The book is very badly written. It is really not the best source of information for those who would want both to know more about Castro's Cuba and not to suffer from lousy writing style. Perhaps i should blame it on the translation, though, but I see that Spanish and English versions fare no better.

Cube--I think what you mean is this book bashes Castro's Cuba left--not left and right.