A messy custody battle over Fidelito followed the divorce. Mirta once resorted
to kidnapping her son when Castro refused to return him after a visit, and
was then forced to return to live in Cuba if she wanted to remain with her
child. She eventually went into exile in Spain and has never spoken of her
marriage to Castro, some believe because if she did she’d never be allowed
back to Cuba to visit her Fidelito, now a 59-year-old nuclear scientist with
children of his own.
Care of his son was not uppermost in Castro’s mind, however, when he got out
of prison. He swiftly indulged his passion for Naty, and Alina was
conceived. He then left for a period of exile in Mexico, to continue
plotting revolution with his new comrade-in-arms, Che Guevara, before
returning to Cuba and spending two years waging guerrilla warfare from the
mountains of the Sierra Maestra. When his rebel band overthrew Batista in
January 1959, Castro paraded the streets of Havana astride a Sherman tank
with Fidelito and another loyal comrade-in-arms, Huber Matos, by his side.
From then, the revolutionary hero had women at his feet. “He was young,
charismatic and powerful. He didn’t have to do much to attract them,” says
Alina. During the Sierra Maestra years, he had acquired a new mistress.
Celia Sanchez, not known for her looks, was a committed revolutionary and a
born organiser. She would jealously guard Castro from other women for the
next 2½ decades.
Huber Matos perches on the edge of his seat in the Miami home where he has
lived in exile for nearly 30 years, his eyes blazing as he spits out the
words “crook”, “unscrupulous” and “zero morals” to describe the man he once
fought alongside for Cuba’s freedom. Matos is remarkably fit for a man of 90
who spent 20 years in prison — 16 in solitary confinement — for accusing
Castro of betraying the democratic ideals of the Cuban revolution.
Matos and Celia Sanchez were close friends. “She was a good person, very
Catholic, very passionate about social justice,” he says. “When I
got there it was very clear she was sleeping with Castro. She was both his
secretary and his lover. He told me she was ‘very useful’. I thought he
should have treated her with more respect, but women were just instruments
to Castro. I do not believe he is a man with any personal sentiment or
feelings. He uses people, and once they have served their purpose he gets
rid of them.”
Castro may have felt little for the women he slept with, but he inflamed
strong passions in them, as Matos recalls when he describes how Celia
reacted when one very attractive young teacher offered the maximum leader
private English lessons. “I was standing at the bottom of the stairs as
Castro came down and this blonde teacher shouted after him, ‘Don’t forget
those private lessons, Fidel! I’ll be waiting for you!’ Then I saw Celia
come up behind her and sink her nails into the woman’s back to get her out
of the way. She was very jealous.” Castro completely ignored the catfight
going on behind him, Matos says. “He was totally indifferent.”
Celia’s gatekeeping failed to prevent numerous sexual liaisons, as Castro’s
prowess increased with his power. One of the few to have kissed and told on
the Cuban leader is Marita Lorenz, then a naive 19-year-old German-American
concentration camp survivor, whom Castro seduced in February 1959. Lorenz
claims he installed her as his lover for seven months in a suite in the
Havana Libre hotel, formerly the Havana Hilton, which he took over as his
private residence in the months after deposing Batista. “Every day, letters
came from women all over the world offering to do anything to meet him,”
Lorenz, who witnessed a string of flings, has said. She was spurned, she
says, after she became pregnant and had an abortion.
She returned to the US and was enlisted by the CIA to assassinate her former
lover. They gave her two capsules of botulism to drop in his drink. But,
waiting for him in the Havana Libre, she panicked and flushed them down the
bidet. In a scene straight out of a thriller, Lorenz describes how Castro
came in, lay down on the bed with a cigar and asked her: “Did you come here
to kill me?” When she admitted she had, he pulled out a handgun and, with
his eyes closed, passed it to her. She describes how Castro chewed his
cigar, smiled and said, “You can’t kill me. Nobody can”, before sleeping
with her and allowing her to flee.
The CIA failed in more than 630 attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader,
while his reputation as a lady-killer flourished. There was his reputed
affair with the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, and alleged couplings
with an unnamed Cuban actress who claimed he was a selfish brute for simply
“putting his pants down, and quick”. One underage dancer at the Tropicana
nightclub said he smoked throughout; another said he never took his boots
off.
Celia didn’t put a stop to such dalliances, seeing them as little threat. But
one relationship she was determined to thwart was that with Alina’s mother,
barring her rival’s access to Castro at every turn. When Alina was eight,
she was dispatched to Paris with her mother, who had been given a spurious
mission to carry out chemical espionage, on the orders, Alina believes, of
the woman she calls “La Venenosa” — the poisonous one. When they returned to
Cuba, Naty was kept on the sidelines and shunted from one minor ministerial
job to another.
Alina was a nervous and rebellious teenager, developing eating disorders for
which her father ordered she undergo psychiatric treatment. She married four
times in quick succession — her father attending only the first nuptials —
and started mixing with dissidents. When Castro refused to let her leave the
island, Alina sought the help of exiles and, in 1993, at the age of 37, was
eventually smuggled out on a false passport.
Naty remained in Havana and has never spoken critically of Castro. “She
receives no privileges now or special attention. She has gone through very
hard times. I think her heart was broken by my father,” says Alina. It is
the only time in our conversation she has called him that.
Drive west through Havana’s suburbs and eventually you approach what used to
be a fishing village, Jaimanitas. After the revolution, the area became
heavily militarised. There is a military academy here, but also a far more
secret installation — bristling with soldiers and secret police — that those
Cubans who know of its existence call Punto Cero, or ground zero. At the
heart of the complex is a swimming pool, basketball and tennis courts, a
helicopter landing pad and the entrance to a tunnel to Havana’s military
airport. It is said that Castro could survive at this secret compound for
two years without ever having to leave.
