Anti-communist sister of Fidel and Raul Castro
MIAMI — Juanita Castro, the sister of Cuban rulers Fidel and Raúl Castro who worked with the CIA against their communist government, has died in Miami at 90. Florida had been her home since shortly after fleeing the island nearly 60 years ago.
Journalist María Antonieta Collins, who co-wrote Juanita Castro’s 2009 book, “Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers. The Secret History,” wrote on Instagram that she died on Dec. 4.
“Juanita Castro was ahead of us on the path of life and death, exceptional woman, tireless fighter for the cause of her Cuba that I love so much,” Collins wrote.
The Cuban government and media had not mentioned her death last week.
In her book, Juanita Castro, a staunch anti-communist, wrote that she began collaborating with the CIA shortly after the United States botched the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
She had originally supported her older brothers’ efforts to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista, raising money and buying weapons. She became disillusioned when Fidel Castro became a hard-line communist after taking power in 1959 and pushed those who disagreed out of his government.
When her home in Cuba became a sanctuary for anti-communists in the early 1960s, Fidel Castro warned his sister not to get involved with the “gusanos,” or worms, as the government called those who opposed the revolution.
She said in her book that it was the wife of Brazil’s ambassador to Cuba who persuaded her to meet with a CIA officer during a 1961 trip to Mexico City. She said she told the agent that she didn’t want any money, and would not support any violence against her brothers or others.
She remained on the island while their mother was alive, believing that protected her from Fidel’s full wrath.
“My brothers could ignore what I did or appear to ignore it so as not to hurt my mom, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have problems,” she wrote. After their mother died in 1963, “everything was becoming more dangerously complicated.”
Ms. Castro fled Cuba the following year, after Raúl helped her get a visa to Mexico. She never saw her brothers again.
“I can no longer remain indifferent to what is happening in my country,” she told reporters upon her arrival in Mexico. “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.”
She eventually settled into a quiet life in Miami, where she ran a Little Havana pharmacy. She became a U.S. citizen in 1984.
Fidel Castro died in 2016 at 90, while Raul, 92, is living in retirement. The eldest brother, Ramon, died in 2016 at 91.