The younger sister of Fidel and Raul Castro, Juanita Castro, collaborated with the CIA against her brothers’ rule in Cuba before going into exile in Miami in 1964, she said on Sunday.
Juanita Castro, 76, who has not spoken to her brothers for more than four decades, made the revelation to the Spanish-language TV channel Univision-Noticias 23 on the eve of publishing her memoirs about Fidel and Raul Castro.
The book in Spanish, entitled Fidel and Raul, My Brothers, the Secret History, co-written with Mexican journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, went on sale yesterday.
After initially supporting Fidel Castro’s revolution, which toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1959, Juanita Castro said she became disillusioned by the way her elder brother was executing opponents and moving the island toward communism.
“I began to become disenchanted when I saw so much injustice,” she said in an interview with Collins broadcast by the TV station.
Juanita Castro said that from her house in Havana, she had worked to shelter those who were being persecuted by the government.
“My situation in Cuba became delicate because of my activity against the regime,” she said.
She told Collins that one day a person close to both her and Fidel Castro brought her an invitation from the CIA asking her to collaborate with the US spy agency.
“They wanted to talk to me because they had interesting things to tell me, and interesting things to ask me, such as if I was willing to take the risk, if I was ready to listen to them — I was rather shocked, but anyway I said yes,” Juanita Castro told Collins.
Collins said that “in this way began a long relationship with the arch-enemy of Fidel Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“During three years, from 1961 to 1964, at the risk of her own life, the work of Juanita Castro was to save the lives of her compatriots long before she left for exile in Miami,” Collins said, without giving more details.
Juanita has been a strong critic of Fidel Castro’s communist rule in Cuba, saying he betrayed the democratic principles he originally claimed to espouse by turning to Marxism and aligning Cuba with the Soviet Union.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so