Juanita Castro

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Juanita (Juana de la Caridad) Castro (born May 6, 1933) is the sister of former Cuban President Fidel Castro and current President Raúl Castro. She has been living in the United States since 1964, in the neighborhood of Little Havana in Miami, Florida. Juanita owned a Mini Price Pharmacy, which she sold in 2006.

[edit] Biography

Juanita was born in Birán, near Mayarí, in what is now known as Holguín Province. She was the fourth child of Ángel Castro y Argiz and Lina Ruz González, and has three brothers — Ramón, Fidel, and Raúl — and three sisters — Angelita, Enma, and Agustina. The family also has two half siblings, Lida and Pedro Emilio, who were raised by Ángel Castro's first wife Maria Luisa Argota.^[1]

Juanita, like all the Castro siblings, was active in the Cuban revolution, buying weapons for the 26th of July movement during their campaign against Fulgencio Batista. In 1958 Juanita traveled to the U.S. to raise funds.^[2] After the revolution Juanita felt betrayed by the growing influence of Cuban communists over the Cuban government.^[1]

Fidel and Raúl's government policies clashed with family interests, which included their brother Ramón. When the two revolutionaries insisted on imposing "agrarian reform" on some of the family estates, Ramón, who had worked hard maintaining the property, angrily exploded: "Raúl is a dirty little Communist. Some day I am going to kill him."^[2]

In 1964 she left Cuba, staying with her sister Enma, who had left Cuba earlier when she married a Mexican, in Mexico City before emigrating to the United States.^[1] Upon her arrival in Mexico she called a press conference and announced that she had defected from Cuba. "I cannot longer remain indifferent to what is happening in my country," she said. "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."^[2]

Juanita Castro in the immediate post-revolutionary period was credited with helping at least 200 people leave Cuba. According to a 1964 article in Time magazine "after the mother Lina Ruz died, there was a violent episode when Fidel decided to expropriate the family land once and for all. Juanita started selling the cattle; Fidel flew into a rage, denounced her as a 'counterrevolutionary worm,' and rushed to the Oriente farm."^[3]

In 1998, Juanita filed a lawsuit in Spain against her niece Alina Fernández, her brother Fidel Castro's illegitimate daughter, for libel over some passages in Fernández's autobiography, Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba, that was published the same year. The Spanish court ordered Fernández and Plaza & Janes, the Barcelona Random House division that published the book, to pay $45,000 to Juanita. Juanita claimed the book defamed her family stating: "People who were eating off Fidel's plate yesterday come here and want money and power, so they say whatever they want, even if it's not true."^[4]