Life as Castro's daughter-in-law

Posted on Sun, Dec. 17, 2006

Life as Castro's daughter-in-law
Idalmis Menéndez, who now lives in Spain, provides a rare and sometimes
surprising up-close view of life in Fidel's household.
BY LISA ABEND

BARCELONA, Spain - Idalmis Menéndez can't help but smile when she
recalls meeting her first husband.

Visiting an aunt on the outskirts of Havana, she was startled when a
young man appeared in the patio, smelling of fresh dough and tomato
sauce. ''He told me he was a pizza maker,'' she giggles. ``And that he
adored my hair. It was love at first sight.''

Menéndez quickly learned his name was Alex, but it took awhile before
she found out he'd been joking about the pizza. And a couple of weeks
passed before she discovered his real identity.

''We were in his car,'' Menéndez recalls, 'and he said, `I'm Fidel
Castro's son.' ''

Twelve years later Menéndez, 34, still takes pleasure in recalling her
days with Alex, but her memory is now tinged with anger and resentment.
As girlfriend, and then wife to Castro's son, she would be among the
privileged few with access to the comandante's famously secretive
personal life. But the lively, outspoken woman says she also was
subjected to intense pressure and near-Machiavellian manipulation.

In an interview with The Miami Herald, she provided a rare and sometimes
surprising up-close view of life in the Castro household -- a warm Fidel
and his strong-willed wife, Dalia Sotodelvalle, and the well-off
children of his brother, Raúl Castro.

FIRST MEETING

The Havana daughter of a chemist and former schoolteacher, Menéndez
studied computer science, took an office job and, at 22, was living at
home when she met Alex, then 31, on her aunt's patio in 1994.

Even today, it's easy to see what attracted Alex. Stylishly dressed for
this interview in a form-fitting jacket, her thick black hair running
midway down her back, Menéndez today gives the impression of someone who
speaks her mind clearly and convincingly, without mincing words or
exaggerating.

The second-oldest child in the Castro family, Alex is not particularly
good-looking -- his family refers to him as El Gordito (an affectionate
term roughly translated as ''little fat one'') -- and when Menéndez met
him, his personal life was complicated. He was estranged from, but still
married to, his first wife, and he had a mistress. Menéndez was smitten
nonetheless.

Because Menéndez lived at home, and Alex's first wife Miriam was still
living at the Castro compound, the two at first spent a lot of time in
Alex's car. Within a few months, however, space in an apartment that
Alex's brother Antonio kept for his girlfriend opened, and the two moved
in there together. The couple also frequently spent weekends at the
Castro vacation home in the beach town of Varadero, although never when
Fidel himself was around.

To avoid Fidel was Menéndez's decision. In fact, Alex often invited her
on family fishing trips with his father, but she always declined because
she was unwilling to curb her opinions.

''I was critical of many things that were being done in our country,''
she says, ``and I knew that if I went, I would have to bite my tongue,
which would take a lot of work.''

`I JUST LOST IT'

She gave in after her grandfather fell gravely ill with tuberculosis,
and Alex accompanied her to visit him at the hospital. She was horrified
by the conditions there.

''They didn't even have light bulbs,'' she says. ``But they had two
photos of Fidel and Raúl on the wall. I just lost it.''

Alex chastised her and said not all of Cuba's problems were Fidel's
fault. He challenged her to meet his father and see for herself. She
agreed, and Menéndez finally met Fidel at the wedding of one of Alex's
four full brothers. Fidel has three other children by different partners.

''Fidel came in after the bride because he's more important,'' she says.
``But he came right over to me and introduced himself very warmly.''

At the reception, the two talked at length, and Castro invited her to
come live with Alex at Fidel's house. But she still had reservations
about moving to the compound.

'I told him, `My family is very revolutionary, but there are many things
I don't like about the revolution, and I've spoken badly of you. I have
friends in Miami, and I'm not going to give them up for anything in the
world.' ''

Fidel praised her honesty and said there would be no problem as long as
she set limits and didn't publicly discuss ''our things,'' says
Menéndez. ``He told me that by tomorrow he wanted to see me in the house
. . . So I went, had lunch, and my life with them began.''

In November of 1995 she moved into the Castro family home in the
sprawling, heavily guarded compound, known as Punto Cero, in the western
Havana neighborhood of Siboney -- a compound that few Cubans, and even
fewer outsiders, have ever visited.

Three of the sons lived with Fidel and Dalia in the four-bedroom main
house, an L-shaped structure made up of two houses built by wealthy
Cuban families before the Castro revolution's 1959 victory. The houses
were abandoned by their owners when they flew abroad afterward and then
linked when Fidel moved in, according to Cuban defectors who have been
there. The two other sons lived in smaller buildings within the compound.

Although the family lived better than most Cubans, Menéndez said,
conditions at the house were hardly luxurious.

'My friends would say, `Oh, you live in a house with a swimming pool,
you eat meat every day,' '' she says. But when she and Alex got married,
workers ``built him a room on top of the garage. He's a big guy, and he
barely fit between the bed and wall. That is not luxury.''

Alex bought his own car, an old white Pontiac, with money he earned from
his job as a computer programmer. But the first time Menéndez saw him
undressed, she says, ``he had holes in his underwear. That is not what
you expect of a president's son.''

That kind of paradox helps explain Menéndez's own complicated attitude
toward Fidel. She takes issue with some of Fidel's decisions, but not
all: She also criticizes U.S. policy toward Cuba, for example. And
overall, she admires Fidel's work ethic and dedication to his principles.

She recognizes that her nuanced attitude may not be welcome among Cuban
exiles in Miami. Nevertheless, she hopes to be heard, and
Spanish-language media officials in Miami say they are negotiating to
fly Menéndez to Florida to appear on shows.

Menéndez also doubts that Fidel really has the nearly $1 billion fortune
that Forbes magazine recently reported.

''What if this all ends?'' she recalls him saying. ``Nothing of this is
mine; it all belongs to the state. What my children will get after I go
is what the revolution gives them as thanks for my being president. But
I will leave nothing to them.''

Menéndez and Alex married in 1997. She wore a white wedding gown given
to her by a French friend. Fidel wore his traditional olive green
uniform to the reception.

In most ways, life at Punto Cero was simple. Fidel often had breakfast
in his pajamas, and he enjoyed the stuffed turkey the cook would prepare
for birthdays and other celebrations. One of his great pleasures was
playing with his granddaughter Adali, Alex's child from his first marriage.

He also liked conversations with Menéndez. ''Even when we disagreed, he
liked talking, because he could tell that I was being sincere with
him,'' she says.

One argument erupted when Castro learned that Menéndez had left her
government office job to work in tourism -- where she could earn needed
U.S. dollars.

'I said to him, `Look, I have food every day, a glass of milk every day,
because you give it to me. But my family doesn't have milk. You don't
know what it's like out there.' He listened to me, and he said I was
right.''

That openness from Fidel is one reason that Menéndez still feels
affection for the man who ruled Cuba for 47 years until he became ill in
July and turned over power to Raúl.

'He is egotistical. If he didn't like something, he would pound the
table and say, `Coño, what the hell is this?' But we had a good
relationship. He was always affectionate with me.''

RAUL'S HOUSE

Menéndez's respect does not extend to Raúl and his family, who
apparently did not live the same relatively austere life that Fidel's
family did. Once, she saw how Raúl's children lived.

Fidel's five boys and their wives were in Varadero and went to visit the
house where Raúl's children were staying. Most of the Varadero houses
now used by senior Cuban government officials were seized when their
owners left the country after 1959.

''It was a splendid house, with a lot of servants. A maid was serving
them breakfast,'' she recalled. ``You couldn't help but notice that they
had a different standard of living. Their father permits it.''

Menéndez says the two brothers are not personally close.

''Politically, yes,'' she says, ``but not as a family. They don't even
get together at the end of the year; they never sit down to share a
meal. Raúl's children hide from Fidel because they don't want him to see
how they live.''

DALIA'S PRICEY TASTES

Menéndez saves her harshest criticism, however, for Dalia, Fidel's
companion of 40 years, whom she describes as demanding that her sons and
their wives live austerely while she enjoys some luxuries.

''When Fidel was around,'' says Menéndez, ``Dalia would dress in simple
clothes made by a seamstress. But at night, when he would leave, she
would put on expensive suits and Chanel perfume.''

Although she and Alex, while staying with them on one of Fidel's fishing
boats -- he is reported to have several large pleasure crafts at his
disposal -- once overheard the two having sex, ''they never kissed or
hugged'' in public. And they would argue heatedly. Says Menéndez, ``He
would call her a liar.''

Menéndez agrees with that assessment of Dalia, who has stayed far out of
public view. The first mention of her in The Miami Herald was in 1993 --
25 years after she gave birth to her first child with Fidel.

``Dalia is very manipulative. She couldn't be first lady like she
wanted; Fidel forced her into a secondary role . . . So she looked for
her own world to run, and that world is controlling her kids and their
wives.''

From the beginning, the relationship was frosty. At their first
meeting, at a sailing regatta in Cuba, Dalia refused to take off her
sunglasses when she was presented to Menéndez. She commented acerbically
on the latter's youth.

Recalling Dalia's jealousy, Menéndez describes an occasion when she wore
a nice dress for Sunday dinner and Castro complimented her.
''Afterwards,'' she says, 'Dalia pulled me aside and said, `I didn't
know you were going to get so dressed up . . . From now on, you have to
tell me what you're going to wear.' ''

A MISCARRIAGE

But Menéndez says Dalia's worst manipulation may have come when she told
her mother-in-law that she suspected she was pregnant. The next day,
when Menéndez went to a clinic, her regular gynecologist had been
replaced by another doctor. The new physician gave her some pills,
telling her that the medicine -- harmless if she was pregnant -- would
induce menstruation if she wasn't.

The pills caused her to miscarry. When she went back to the clinic for a
checkup, a nurse took Menéndez aside and told her that if she wanted to
have children with Alex, she shouldn't return to that clinic. Menéndez
believes that her mother-in-law arranged for the doctor to induce the
abortion.

'Dalia never wanted [her sons'] families to grow,'' she says.

Although Menéndez says she eventually discovered that Alex was being
unfaithful, she places a good deal of the blame for their eventual
breakup on Dalia.

Dalia was especially unhappy with her efforts to persuade Alex to meet a
daughter from a previous relationship. ''She used all her means to go
after me,'' says Menéndez, ``and things started to add up.''

When Dalia prohibited Menéndez from decorating the kitchen in her and
Alex's apartment with tiles because they were ''too luxurious,''
Menéndez complained bitterly in a phone chat with her aunt. The call was
recorded at Dalia's orders, and the tape given to Fidel.

Dalia used the tape to turn Fidel against Menéndez. ``He said he was
very disappointed in me and that he didn't want to see me for awhile.''

Dalia then prohibited Alex and Menéndez from eating meals with the
family and from doing their laundry at Punto Cero. She cut Alex's
gasoline allowance and put the two on food rations. For Alex, it proved
too much.

''One day, he told me there was too much going on with his family,'' she
said. 'He drove me to my parents' house and left me there.'' When
Menéndez tried to retrieve her things from the Castro compound, she was
turned away.

Even that didn't completely end her relationship with Alex. For a while,
he spent nights with her at her parent's home. But eventually she
realized the indignity of the situation, and she divorced him in 2000.

Menéndez then tried to leave Cuba but found herself stymied by
immigration officials until Alex intervened on her behalf. These days,
she lives in a town outside Barcelona, Spain, with her new Spanish
husband and their 20-month-old son. Two Cuban exiles once close to the
Castro family confirmed Menéndez had been married to Alex.

REMAINS ANXIOUS

Today, Menéndez speaks with the determined air of someone who has come
forward after a long silence. She recently granted an interview to the
Spanish TV program Donde Estás, Corazón?, in part because she knew that
her story would garner the most interest before Castro dies and in part
because she finally felt free enough to speak.

Although she says she doesn't fear the consequences of speaking out, she
clearly remains anxious about the Cuban government's long reach. She
refuses to conduct interviews by phone, worried both that her lines may
be tapped and that she cannot assess the interviewer by voice alone.

Although she occasionally communicates with Alex, her only access to
Fidel now is through television. The latest images of the Cuban leader
-- wearing a jogging suit and looking frail -- made her cry.

''I never thought I'd see him looking ridiculous,'' she says.

She has no reliable information on the ailment that has kept Fidel away
from public events since July 26, and she believes that someone needs to
tell the truth about his health.

``From what I've heard from the family members with whom I'm in contact,
he's still alive. But he owes the Cuban people an explanation. To not
tell them what is happening is one more display of his lack of respect.''

And while she believes that Fidel did good things for Cuba, that doesn't
prevent her from offering him advice.

``Fidel was always obsessed with the threat of imperialism, and he
thought he could do the thinking for 11 million Cubans. But he can't. He
should have listened to the voice of his people.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/16258230.htm