Alina Fernández Revuelta, Fidel Castro's biological daughter, stated in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times that Cuba has been in need of a regime change for decades and that this moment is more urgent than ever.
The statement does not come from just any observer: Fernández grew up within the revolutionary elite, she is the daughter of the founder of the system she criticizes and has been in exile for over thirty years denouncing it.
"To me, the time has come for a regime change since the late 1980s," Fernández said in the interview signed by Emel Akan and published on Wednesday. "When Fidel Castro died, we all thought his regime had come to an end, because it was a very personalistic, paternalistic... narcissistic government. But it survived."
Fernández, born in 1956, did not know that Castro was her biological father until she was ten years old. Until then, she believed that her father was the cardiologist Orlando Fernández Ferrer, her mother's husband. Her stepfather left Cuba with her sister in the early 1960s, which forced her to state in her school documents that she had "traitors in the family."
His process of becoming aware began in childhood, when he understood that what was called "volunteer work" was actually mandatory. "I discovered that in Cuba, volunteer meant mandatory," he recalled. "I soon realized that they were lying to me."
She became a public dissident in the late 1980s, with the constant fear that something would happen to her teenage daughter during the Special Period, which she described as "years of total misery" without electricity, food, or transportation.
The crisis of Mariel in 1980 was another turning point. Fernández witnessed how the regime organized mobs to humiliate and attack those who wanted to leave. "It killed me to see people being treated like that officially," he declared.
In 1993, he fled Cuba at the age of 37 using the passport of a Spanish tourist. He first traveled to Spain, obtained political asylum at the United States Embassy in Madrid, and on December 21st of that year, he arrived in Atlanta. Days later, Reverend Jesse Jackson visited Cuba and managed to get Castro to authorize the departure of his granddaughter, which Fernández described as "divine intervention."
Since then, he has been living in Miami with a modest life, similar to that of other Cuban exiles. He claims that he no longer maintains contact with his family members, including his uncle Raúl Castro, who is 94 years old.
"One of the greatest tragedies of Cuba is that this madness divided families in the most dramatic way. If you didn't think the same, you became the enemy," he noted. "It's terrible. It has been this way from the beginning."
His statements come at a time of maximum pressure on Havana. Following the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces on January 3, shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba were halted, triggering one of the worst economic and energy crises on the island in decades, with widespread blackouts, shortages of food and medicine, and protests in several cities.
The president Trump declared last Sunday that Cuba "is going to be next" to collapse. "It will fail in a short time and we will be there to help," he stated.
Fernández, however, warns that a significant change from within Cuba is unlikely in the short term: the cacerolazos will not be sufficient to bring down a deeply rooted system with highly centralized power.
After years away from the media, Fernández now participates in the documentary "Revolution's Daughter," which premieres in Miami on April 10 as part of the 43rd Miami Film Festival. "I have kept silent for many, many years," she acknowledged. "I felt that I had already said everything I needed to say."
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