Juanita Castro, sister of Fidel and longtime opponent of communism, dies in Miami

Juanita Castro, sister of former Cuban rulers Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro and a longtime opponent of the Communist regime in Cuba, died Monday in Miami. She was 90.

The fifth daughter of Angel Castro and Lina Ruz, born in Birán, in the eastern region of Cuba, Castro was one of the most vigorous critics of Fidel Castro’s regime and never returned to her country after going into exile.

She left the island in 1964, on her way to Mexico to reunite with her sister Enma. By that time she already had significant differences with her brother Fidel, due to his turn toward communism. Before she left Cuba she had begun working as a CIA agent. As part of that work she helped two hundred people leave the island.

She settled in Miami in 1964 and opened a pharmacy in Little Havana, Mini Price, in 1973. She sold the drugstore to the CVS Pharmacy chain in 2006.

“Today, Juanita Castro went ahead of us on the path of life and death, an exceptional woman, a tireless fighter for the cause of her Cuba that she loved so much,” journalist María Antonieta Collins, who wrote Castro’s 2009 memoirs, Fidel and Raúl, mis hermanos. La historia secreta — “Fidel and Raúl, my brothers. The secret history,” said on social media.

“It is the story of the woman who broke with everything, and who in 1964 came to live in the Cuban exile in the United States. It is the story that Juanita Castro owed us all, the one that she has never told anyone, and here you have it,” Collins said, according to the Amazon page where the book is for sale.

One more family from Cuba

Castro said in an interview with Univision in September 2014 that she and her siblings were “just another family in Cuba” until Fidel and Raúl led the attack on the Moncada barracks in eastern Cuba in 1953, the beginning of the revolution against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Of the seven children of born to Angel Castro and Lina Ruz – Angelita, Ramón, Fidel, Raúl, Juanita, Enma, and Agustina – only Raúl Castro and Enma survive Juanita. Angelita died in 2012, Ramón in February 2016, Fidel in November 2016 and Agustina in 2017.

When Fidel Castro died, his sister had not spoken to him for more than five decades, and although she had condemned his actions, she could not rejoice in his death, she told the New York Times. “I found out through a phone call from a friend,” she said.

“An example of the division of the Cuban family at all levels, including the Castro Ruz family,” said journalist José Alfonso Almora on social media when remembering Juanita Castro.

Publicist Omer Pardillo was a neighbor of Juanita Castro and used to stop to talk with her on his long walks when he took his son out in a stroller.

“She seemed to me to be a very respectful lady, very admirable. One of her virtues was that she was very reserved,” Pardillo said. “We never talked about anything personal, but we did comment on current issues.”

The breaking point

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Castro worked building clinics and hospitals in the countryside, until she began to turn against the executions and imprisonment of her brother’s opponents and the confiscations of property.

“I start to get disenchanted when I see so much injustice, and I say, this is not possible, they are wrong here, someone here is doing things wrong,” she said in the Univision interview.

‘’We tended to blame the subordinates, but it really wasn’t from the subordinates that the orders came from, it was from the upper layers, from Fidel, from Che, from Raúl,’‘ she said in the same interview in which she revealed that she began working with the CIA.

A person close to her and Fidel Castro told her that the CIA wanted to talk to her, she said, explaining how her relationship with U.S> intelligence began. “They had interesting things to tell me and interesting things to ask me… I was kind of shocked, but I said yes anyway,” she said.

Collins, the author, said that at the time of her death, Juanita Castro was accompanied by her sister Enma, with whom she was very close, and other family members.

“Her sister Enma and her extended family ask for privacy at this painful time. There will be no interviews and according to her wishes her funeral will be private. We ask for your prayers for the eternal rest of her soul,” Collins said on social media.

Juanita Castro had asked that her ashes remain in Miami and her family said it will respect her wishes.