Original subtitles

Will you ever forgive your father?

If you're asking me if I'm going to forgive that I had to escape my country

with a daughter, that I've been harassed for so many years here in America, if

I'm going to forgive having a very uncertain future,

no, I won't.

No. Why?

Mucha agua.

63 years.

Normalmente taxi.

Let's go.

What is it, comrades?

What is it? A comrade from here?

The comrades from here?

The comrades from there?

The comrades from there?

Communist Party of Cuba!

In Cuba, the revolution has been underway since 1959.

Fidel Castro is one of the most emblematic figures of the 20th century.

Some regard him as a revolutionary hero.

He challenged the injustices of capitalism from an island barely 90

miles from the United States.

Others deem him a dictator.

For half a century, it never occurred to the people that he could be replaced.

He nationalized practically everything.

The economy has not grown in decades.

There's no freedom of speech, no opposition.

If you don't like it, you can swim wherever you want.

Today, two million Cubans live abroad, most of them in Miami.

Thank you.

Let's go.

How did they call you?

Fidel Castro's rebel. I cried with that. I cried with that, yes, because the

publishing houses impose you the titles of the books, which are things that many

people don't know, right? That the publishing houses practically force you.

So that wasn't the title you wanted to give your book. Of course not. An

adjective that I now carry like a slab.

The way you entered this country caught my attention a lot.

You came out of Spain disguised.

How was that?

Well... Disguised of what?

Spanish tourist. Really?

And olé, of course.

Because they lent me a passport of a Spanish girl who was taken out, she was

falsified elsewhere.

Well, it's something like that, quite frivolous, right?

But I had to go out with that passport that already had my photo. Her name, I'm

not going to say her last name, it was Victoria.

And I was practicing the night before how to sign like her and some little

things like that, right?

Tell them about the taxi driver, Lina, please. So, well, to get the taxi, my

daughter was the one who went out to get the taxi. I got dressed, I put on

makeup, I got dressed.

That's possible, to dress up as a Spanish tourist in Cuba.

In the building, a building that was near the mayor, at the bottom of the

mayor. So when I got out of that transformed building, my daughter had

gone to pick up the taxi and I went speaking like a Spanish woman to José

Martí airport. You're so pretty.

Well. Weren't you afraid?

I'm a bit of a clown too.

You know that being a clown, it's going to run in the blood.

And then... Ladies and gentlemen, an incomprehensible person with a few words

is enough.

I enjoyed it in a certain way, but it was also the most heartbreaking moment

of my life, look.

Yes, of course. And you managed to rape the customs and immigration.

At a time when there were no computers.

No, more than 20 years ago. Imagine that, you know.

They have some cameras in sight, but I was quite well dressed, I wore a hat,

a top.

But well, it was relatively easy, the truth, compared to other people who have

not only risked their lives.

but he has lost her trying to leave Cuba.

Alina, tell me something. You were married to one of the main dancers of

the National Ballet of Cuba, right? Among others.

Ah, yes, there were many marriages. Among other marriages, no, other

dancers, yes.

How does one feel when someone is told, you are Fidel's daughter? By the way,

going back to ballet.

He is the father of my daughter, the dancer.

Well, how does one feel?

That was a change of identity for me, because while I was in Cuba, I tried to

deny it.

And since I left Cuba, I assumed it.

I thought that assuming it would be a little more useful.

Well, but in Cuba people knew that you existed.

Yes, but in Cuba things are different. Because when you were a model of the

Maison, I remember that I used to go a lot to the Maison and everyone would

say, Alina, the model, the one who is Fidel's daughter. You considered

yourself, in all that time that you lived in Cuba, even if you were on the

sidelines of the population knowing that you were the daughter of the commander,

did you consider yourself at some point a privileged girl?

No.

Look, a privilege in Cuba is as simple as having a house.

So, yes, we had a house.

My mother had a car that, by the way, got old along with the revolution

because it was a 59-year-old car.

A BMW?

No, it was a Mercedes.

It ended up being lit with one wire and turned off with another.

We don't know. You left a long time ago. I was there 60 days ago.

The country is destroyed, the hospitals are destroyed, everything is destroyed.

Schools in the countryside are being distributed to the peasants as housing,

right? But then they are small cities,

as they say in Mexico. They will become sunsets. They will become sunsets. And

he told me, and I have noticed it here,

Cuba lives in Miami, Cuba lives in historical exile.

My people, you are in the Caribbean,

hanging like an old man who dies.

The pain and abandonment are your sad company.

My people, I left without joy.

What will it be? What will it be? What will it be?

What will be of my life, what will it be?

If I know much, I know nothing, tomorrow it will be seen. And it

will be, it will be what it will be.

Almost all my friends have left.

The others will leave after me.

Come on in.

Fidel was sent to jail.

And my mother wrote to him. He wrote back.

I think that the relationship started with this letter.

The exchange, I mean, I haven't seen anything more powerful than a letter.

You know, I'm writing a letter with the touch and the smell of a good old

letter that is so powerful.

So Fidel left for Mexico, and my mother gave birth to me when he was in Mexico.

In my mother's mind, nothing bad was happening in

the country, for the contrary.

In my father's mind they took away his clinic.

They took away everything They took away his wife.

So everything bad was happening. He wanted to save Her his daughter from

that you just said my father. That's what I always say I mean in my papers my

father is Orlando Fernandez so I

Have two fathers

But Orlando knew from the beginning, even before my mother got pregnant, that

she was in love with Fidel.

For my mother, the important things were the revolution and Fidel Castro.

And why were you in that picture?

I would like to know.

My mother is a very strong woman. I never saw her crying or complaining

about anything.

But you can't say when somebody's unhappy.

You can't say, you know.

I would have killed for her.

Then when I grew up, I realized that it wasn't the same feeling from her to

me. See?

Since I became an adolescent, I wasn't happy in that country. I never, ever

adapted socially to the whole process, meaning that it made the

relationship between my mother and me more difficult because it was

cotidianity. The country I loved, the government she trusted, that's

what I wanted to live.

That's what I hated the most.

That's the place I felt a prisoner in.

My experience with Fidel Castro is more the one of a Cuban child that was

growing up, you know, dressing uniform, marching all the time, chanting anthems

and revolutionary slogans, and, you know, seeing madness around me, hysteria

and madness. That's what I remember.

I don't remember feeling any hate.

personal hate for him i felt betrayed of course by the revolutionary process in

my country i didn't consider or even consider that the promises were kept

they lied to us systematically but my mother was also lied my mother is not

it's not the author here it's just a believer the first thing that fidel

castro said publicly is that we were not even close to become a communist

country And he affirmed that many, many times until one day he changed his

mind. One day, not in a public place with, you know, where he usually gave

all his speeches, but in a theater, very secluded, with people already preparing

the crowd.

What are we?

Camera and camera stand and said, we are communists. And from one day to another,

we were transformed.

So get to power and control power in every way. It takes time and takes a lot

of lives, of course.

You're not going to go there and say, hey, people, I'm going to despise you,

use you.

I'm not going to feed you. I'm not going to allow you to have new shoes.

And people are going to hail you and applaud you. That doesn't happen.

Is there anything that is missing from Havana that you can't find here? Oh, of

course. First of all, 500 years of history, at least.

One of

the pictures belonged to my mother also.

It's very sad, but that's what happened.

It had happened to me many times that I had to recognize my mother's painting in

somebody else's walls, which is kind of sad, but it's what has been happening

for the last half a century in Cuba. People are getting rid of good, good

things because they need the money.

When you're in Cuba, Miami is demonized, right?

And all the mad and crazy and hysteric, exiled people live in Miami.

So it's kind of, it's part of the propaganda and the brainwash.

So as a lot of Cubans, I turned around until I finally ended here. I didn't

lose anything by coming here. I didn't lose anything by coming here because I

never owned anything.

In a communist country, you don't own anything.

Anything can be taken away from you at any time. So I never had the feeling of

ownership, not of an apartment or a house or anything.

Oh, the freedom is everything.

How you describe freedom wasn't that difficult for you to be free at the

first time or no? It's not difficult to be free what is difficult is to learn

your rights and your duties by being free the oppression and the whole

difficulties and Dictatorship and tyranny it's heavily romanticized a lot

of times well the revolution what was made a legend because of the

American media at the beginning. So you had Time Magazine and Herbert Matthews,

for example, a very respectful and respected journalist making Fidel Castro

appear like this, you know, romantic figure who was the king of justice.

And that's how everything started.

He's an excellent and a genius manipulator of public opinion.

And of course, I have said very clear that we are not

communists.

Very clear.

I've seen a lot of sympathizers to the Cuban regime, even millionaires, but

they are going to stay in America. They are not going to move to Cuba, except

for visiting.

They are not going to send their children to be educated there, or they

are not going to go there to get health care.

Fidel Castro's arrival in Havana was triumphant.

He was the hero, the liberator of the Cuban people.

He promised them the things they had longed for and had fought for.

Elections, land reform, freedom.

An end to oppression and bitter poverty.

He promised that every Cuban would at last enjoy the rights guaranteed under

the Constitution of 1940.

My mother told me I was Fidel Castro's daughter when I was 10, 10 years and a

half old.

which wasn't nothing that at the end surprised me either because he was the

only presence in the house.

So until I was 10 years old, I thought my father was this bad guy that

abandoned the country, which I loved because I have the greatest memories

also about Orlando Fernandez, right? He was tender to me when I was small. He

was nice, gentle.

And he left.

They made you write down in school if you have people that abandoned the

country.

So it was kind of very humiliating to have relatives that had abandoned the

country. They made it precisely humiliating for you. You were like

stigmatized. So when suddenly Fidel Castro became my father, it was like,

oh, that's a release.

I always had the feeling that nothing was normal around me because people will

approach you asking you for things.

It doesn't matter what.

I mean, it could be a house or a pair of shoes, which I didn't have, by the way.

So the only way you have to protect yourself from that is to say,

my name is Fernandez. I'm not related to him. My mother gave everything up and

she somehow also became a leper because Nobody will approach her.

I mean, no man will go and ask her to go to a party or to have dinner with

because they were afraid.

They always said, well, it's like a sacred cow.

You know, she already belonged to a comandante, so I won't even.

And she has a daughter with a comandante. What will I do her? Will I

help her raise the comandante daughter? Everybody was scared to death.

Being Castro's daughter in Cuba is going to bring over you every possible

reaction, depending on if they like him or not, or they love

him, crazy love, or they hate him, crazy hate, or

whatever. That's what you're gonna have.

You're never gonna be yourself, and it took me many, many years to try to,

you know, to at least convince myself that I was this human being who liked

this or that or disliked this or that.

I tried to live a normal life beside that relationship.

And I understood from the beginning that people were not reacting, I mean,

basically to me, but to him.

I've been trying to leave Cuba since I became an adolescent, I think.

I put up some pretext that I had invitations here and there.

I wasn't able to do it. I had to escape and it was only possible in 1993.

So I was playing roulette with my future, my immediate future and my

daughter's future for sure.

So that's the way I felt.

It was a game. If I lost,

consequences will be pretty bad.

No, but they can send her to a hospital, you know, which is a little bit worse.

They have ways to arrest you.

I left my daughter behind.

She was my only accomplice.

One American preacher, Reverend Jesse Jackson, he went to Cuba. Fidel told him

that he was going to release my daughter if her father and her grandmother also

agreed. And I think that to his surprise, both agreed that she should

join me.

I left on the 19th, went to Spain, came here, and the 31st of December, my

daughter was here.

This is nice, it's very green, right?

What kind of area is this? It took me many, many times to come here to learn

the way. It's called Miami Lakes, right?

The house is, of course, the cat house.

This group of friends, Mama, how long have you been sort of hanging out with

them? Like a year?

No, more. More?

Well, it happened after I left Miami to go to Boston.

Sergio.

This is Sergio's house.

I made it. I'm wearing it for the first time today.

Wow, it's really nice. You like it? Yeah.

I have two.

It's the new hobby. The first one I give to my mom. And it's the ugliest one.

Poor baby.

This is the first one.

It's a nice house, right?

Happy birthday!

This

is

really a gallery.

It is.

Those are my dearest.

This is Agustin Fernandez, the same I have at home.

This is 1918.

Human painting, but without the influence from European influence.

They are truck tires.

There were people floating on the inside. This is a means of, you know,

escaping.

No, because I'm surprised by this.

Are there Cubans tonight?

Yes!

And tell Catalina that you're with Fru Puey, or what?

Yes!

When you leave Cuba, you want to leave Cuba. You're not looking Cuba everywhere

else. You even have some rejection for the Cuban music at the beginning.

You want to listen to whatever was forbidden for you to listen there.

So the first time I had the opportunity to go to a record store, I got me El

Piaf and The Beatles.

So little by little, I went back to Cuban music, which is what I know and

what I enjoy.

It's great.

That's how Venezuelans say it.

Chévere cambur.

Jala jala. I bring it for you.

Chupa chupa.

I bring it for you.

Jala jala.

Hey, but I'm worried.

How is it that jala jala is stronger than chupa chupa?

Is it that nobody sucks tonight?

Let's see, let's see.

How is the suck tonight?

Come on, come on.

I want to hear it.

My daughter goes often to Cuba because she's allowed to.

And she goes at least once a year to visit my mother.

And yes, she found the place changed and much easier to live in. But of course,

she goes as a tourist mostly because she's going to spend 10 days or 15.

It's amazing because I've met people coming back from Cuba.

Generally, Cubans that go back after a while come back very depressed.

Some others come back with the feeling that they did okay. They spend some days

with their families. They help out.

And some other people come with the feeling that they went to the most

gorgeous place on earth. So it's kind of confusing for me because what I left was

hell, at least for this woman here.

The freighter prepares to return to the United States with an even more precious

cargo, more than a thousand relatives of those war prisoners who have been

granted refuge in the U.S. They, too, pay a heavy price.

Before they can leave, they have to surrender homes, cars, and jewelry.

Castro allows them to take only a change of clothing as they bid their homeland

farewell. Fourteen of the refugees are stretcher cases, but they let nothing

stay their flight.

They face a rough trip to Florida. The ship is riding high in the water, but

freedom is worth the price.

They were unable to stay on deck to bid their homeland farewell.

Authorities feared that there would be dangerous overcrowding at the rails.

It is a scene of quiet courage, people who face an uncertain future, sure of

but one thing, freedom.

Stories of life in their homeland, a homeland they have renounced until

freedom lives there once again.

I ask myself many times, if things change in Cuba, are you going to go

back? I have friends that have a very firm answer for that.

But not me. I don't know. I don't know.

You know, the sense of feeling useful somewhere is what drives you to places.

And I'm sure if I find something useful to do in Cuba, I'll be back. But will

that happen?

Because I wouldn't have any other reason to go back.

He's doing his best.

Where are your roots? I mean, somewhere between the sea?

I don't know.

I don't know. The root problem is something I stopped asking to myself

because I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer.

I was never able to root in there. I really had always the feeling that I

wanted to leave that place, and I don't think I have roots here either.

So I'm a ruthless person.

And I know that for many people that's a big conflict, but I haven't found that

to be so dramatic.

Have you ever heard of Alicia Alonso?

I think so.

Her daughter runs also a ballet school in which I worked before I left.

Her name is Laura Alonso.

Where are you going on Sunday?

To the United States.

With the ballet?

No, with only me.

To teach.

You teach often in New York? Every year.

For how long?

For two months.

Amazing. So when can we talk to you?

Now.

Do you know the difference between a ballet teacher and a terrorist?

Unfortunately, I don't. You can negotiate with a terrorist.

Somebody in Miami recommended you to find you when we were in Cuba, and that

was Alina Fernandez.

She told us to go and find Laura because she's an amazing woman.

Thank you. And she has stories to tell. She's a good person.

And she wanted to dance very badly.

But she started too late.

Which is a shame.

She could have,

but she started too late.

Which is... But that's her story.

She left the country.

I think every human being has the right to choose where they're going to live.

It's your right for happiness.

If she thinks she's going to be happy there, please.

I don't know why she left.

I really don't.

But that's her decision and I'm not going to mess up with that.

And you're never proud of leaving because of the...

I'm tough.

And I do not give up.

I would never write the book.

I want my parents remembered for the good they've done.

Everything else, It's not really important.

The good is more outweighs the bad.

Do you think it's the case with Alina's father?

I have no idea.

It's not my decision.

It's hers.

I live in Cuba and I work in Cuba.

You shouldn't ask these questions. I know what you're trying to ask, but I

can't.

They have to be clashed, they have to be clashed. There are people who will make

me mash, mash, agerpé. Like a minced meat, but don't forget my cache. If

everyone is afraid of the passenger, flash it, fiché. Push it, push it, flash

it, fiché.

I rap like a stag, it's not my fault that I have a big dick.

It's a brilliant fact in my hip-hop that the MC is transvestite. I stay in my

Supernatural and my echo is retorting. You pass your info every day for a

decade, there is what?

For the fakes and for the fakes, you have to test it on the mic. You will see

the juice and the taste, you have to test it on the mic. A big espiro, you

know, you have to test it on the mic. MC Magnetic on those who clash the nips,

you have to test it on the mic.

You know in Cuba you don't have the slightest idea of what the rest of the

world knows or reads about you but they They kind of brainwash you and make you

think that the rest of the world is watching Cuba with some optical

phenomenon to see what people are doing there against the big imperialist

neighbor. So if you're in Cuba, you have the feeling that everybody knows what's

happening to you.

It's not true. It's just an idea.

Yes, I mean

It's like visiting a museum of archaeological politics, you know? It's

what is left of the Cold War.

It's what is left of what they call a communist country.

So that's why people said so.

I'm sorry for my Cuban fellows because we are really not a museum. We are human

beings.

When you disagree with something in Cuba, you become a leper for most part

of people.

It used to be a very controlled environment politically.

They didn't throw me to jail. They did with everybody else.

But it doesn't mean that you're not scared. You're scared and you're

expecting them to come any time at night, which is what they used to do. So

you're most part of the time sleepless and worried.

and anxious.

It's not a good way of life.

It's not.

No, but it's not the drawer you told me about! No!

Yes, I'm going to turn it on.

That's how you work.

Why is it so hot in your hands?

It's old.

The food in Cuba is poor.

The government believes that by giving the basic basket...

This is a

control of notebooks that is given for a year, which is to

give the basic basket, which I am going to show you now.

Three people, a child who is my grandson, two older people who are my

grandchildren.

Rice for a month for three people.

Beans for three people.

For a month, a month.

Three boxes of phosphorus.

After how much time do you run out of all this?

Because it lasts me 15 days, it can last me a week and a half.

A pound of chicken for adults

per person once a month.

A quarter, a pound. A pound of picadillo,

called picadillo de soya, which tastes like dog vomit.

For a month.

A lot of people in Cuba, a lot of children in Cuba, they don't sleep

without food because they don't have a family or a salary and they work and

work and work.

If we have poverty, if there is no housing, if the salary is low, if there

is no food, how do we do that? Who are the culprits? The air?

Jesus Christ?

No. Of course, we clearly know.

And that is known, and I know it since I was a child, since Victoria won in 1959,

that the culprit is Fidel Castro and his brother's follower, Raúl.

What are you doing here? And you tell him, wait, walk.

Give it back!

There was a knock at the door of my house.

I was raiding the icebox.

And I opened the door and Fidel Castro was there.

And he said, is your father here? And I said, yes.

Well, aren't you going to let me in?

Because I just stood there.

He went up to my father's room.

He sat on the bed and he said, how much money do you need to make a ballet

company?

My father had it written down and he said, such and such.

And he said, I'll give you double, but it better be the best company in the

world.

This is not a legend.

Oh, I was there.

in pajamas, but I was there. Was there anything particular in teaching Fidel

Castro's daughter in your school?

Unless you are the son or the daughter of a famous person, you

really don't know how tough it is.

So you could understand her?

Perfectly.

But...

Nobody else will, unless they have that.

Was she a good dancer? No.

No, she wasn't.

But she knows that.

I met people that spent a lot of time trying to discover the

secret of his personality.

I don't think it's that complicated.

It's just intelligence and narcissism.

He kept himself as a lonely figure, you know, this lonely man, resting fatigues,

kept his personal life totally secretive. But really, I understand that

he's a fascinating character.

When I was very little, he used to visit the house very frequently.

Those visits were of a big guy, tender guy, playing on the ground with me.

That's it. That passed very fast.

I mean, I realized very soon that he was never going to be a regular father.

So I knew you couldn't develop any normal relationship with him. I mean, I

didn't have a phone number or any place to call him. I didn't know where he

lived.

It was impossible.

It was impossible.

I was sitting there and I was listening to a speech and that never changed.

It never ever became personal between us.

Never.

I could see that he had no patience for that.

He was not made for that.

It was a person that was expanding his ideology and his influence.

to the rest of the world i don't think he had much time to to help an infant to

do a homework so somehow i understood that see i wasn't expecting anything

else from a person that has been seven hours on tv telecast in cuba was god

omniscient omnipotent and omnipresent my problem is not with

him as a father i've met a lot of bad parents in my life my problem is with

him As the leader of a country that I found destructed, ruined, you know, so

changed from what I was born in.

That's my grudge. It's not against the person, it's against

the leader.

And then I changed my personality and became Castro's daughter when I left the

country and I was almost 40 years old. For me, it was a passion to speak about

Cuba and what was going on in there.

I was a very passionate dissident at the beginning.

If you forget something and time enough passes by, you know, you lose a lot of

emotions.

Emotions are nothing you can keep for too long.

That's why they are called emotions.

You can keep all your life your convictions your principles, but not

your emotion emotion exhausts themselves What will you do when your father dies?

You don't know how you're gonna react to anything.

But basically I I don't think that I'm gonna be Lighting any fires, you know, I

do know that a lot of people are gonna feel overjoyed They're gonna party

as they did when Chavez died

But I'm not gonna be part of them. Will it be Fidel Castro dying or your father

dying? It's gonna be Fidel Castro dying.

Just like that? Just like that.

Any

person

that leaves Cuba is a traitor.

When it's being considered a traitor, it's being called a traitor, or another

word they use or always had used for that is gusano, which means worm.

It's more original than rats.

But that's the way we were called.

And everything had changed maybe a year, two years ago, because they definitely

want the worms to be reconsidered as Cuban. That way we're going to go back

busy with money and this and that.

Will you ever forgive your father?

If you're asking me if I'm going to forgive that I had to escape my country

with a daughter that I've been harassed for so many years here in America, if

I'm going to forgive having a very uncertain future,

no, I won't.

No. Why?

But it doesn't make me a bitter person. It doesn't make me to think about it.

Every night when I go to bed, you see, I'm not obsessed with that.

Of course, it's unforgivable.