THE WOMEN OF FIDEL CASTRO

Fidel Castro's Women  El Commandante

Cuba's Fidel Castro, Cuba's dictator, has over 11 children by a Chain of Women.

FIDEL CASTO WOMEN IN CUBA

Fidel Castro CubaWomen of Fidel

  FIDEL CASTO RUZ, is the famous Cuban leader with countless female admirers in New York, 1959 Photo: GETTY

Fidel Castro is famous in Cuba for his vitality and longevity. But his fellows comrades and compatriots know nothing about where El Commandante Fidel has proved invincible which is in his private life.
It was forbidden to discuss Fidel's womanizing ways as strictly taboo on this Cuban Communist outpost, even on an island where the gossip grapevine flourishes in the absence of a free news reporters.
But a long-time Cuban aficionado has now revealed the heavy scale of his wild philandering and the discovery of at least 10 offspring that we know of and countless others that rumor have not yet confirmed. That is more than previously believed  but very possibly not the full tally.
When American prize winning journalist Ann Louise Bardach asked Castro how many children he had during an interview with Vanity Fair in 1993, he smiled and answered "almost a tribe".
During the research for Without Fidel, her new book chronicling the lives of Fidel  Castro and his brother, Raul, to be published by Scribner, she discovered how true that observation was.
Fidel Castro is 83 years old and a dashing young man whose good looks and rebel swagger clearly leant him a strong sexual appetite during the years before and after the Cuban revolution. Cuban news reports describe female fans swooning after Fidel Castro of Cuba arrived in Havana and during early trips to the US.
 At that time it was believed that Fidel had one child, Fidelito (Little Fidel), with his first wife Myrta Diaz-Balart in 1949 and five boys between 1962 and 1974 with Dalia Soto del Valle, a invisible companion whom he is said to have secretly married in 1980. Remarkably, she was first shown on Cuban television in 2003 - "so forbidden" was Castro's personal domain, Ms Bardach observes.
However Castro had several other children from many other women - most notably from the time when the young rebel leader celebrated his release from prison in 1955 for a failed uprising.
  Four Castro offspring were born to three women during 1956. Most famously, there was Natalia Revuelta, an aristocratic beauty who became a passionate defender of his Cuban revolution - she bore him a daughter, Alina Fernandez Castro.
Ms Ann Bardach, an investigative journalist and a member of the Cuba Study Group at the Brookings Institution think-tank, had previously reported the existence of another illegitimate 1956 child, Panchita Pupo. Panchita Castro was not even known to his other children and her mother still remains unidentified.
Ann reveals the identity of the mother of Jorge Angel Castro, the third Castro child of 1956 - Maria Laborde, an admirer who Castro met just after was he released from Cuban Prison.
  Bardach also discloses another son known as Ciro, the early 1960s product of another wild exotic romance. Ciro Castro was previously unknown outside the family inner circle, but a close relative of Celia Sanchez, Castro's closest confidante and yet another rumoured lover, revealed his existence to the author.
Ciro Castro was named after a Cuban revolutionary martyr and whose mother's name is still a Cuban state secret, is said to have "movie star looks", with green eyes and dark complexion. Ciro went into sports medicine after studying physical education at college, married a minor party official and lives in a Havana suburb where nobody knows his connection to his father Fidel Castro.
A Cuban intelligence defector that Fidel fathered another son in 1970 are true, that would take the count to 11 children by seven women - and still counting.
Fidel Castro's first name is derived from the Latin for "faithful", but while he has remained true to his politics, the same cannot be said of the women in his life. Fidel's offspring have followed their father's instructions not to flaunted their privileged political backgrounds and are rarely seen in the Cuban public, Fidel Castro's  first son, Fidelito, has received the highest recognition from his father however when he mishandled the country's nuclear power programme, his father ordered his immediate dismissal. "He was fired by his father Fidel for incompetence," Castro said. "We don't have a monarchy here. No one is Spared"
Many Cubans would, disagree with the last point - and with good reason. After the crippling intestinal disease of diverticulitis nearly killed him in 2006, Fidel's brother Raul Castro Of Cubawas anointed to replace him. The younger Castro brother was confirmed as Cuba's Official president last year in a handover which appeared preordained.
  Ann Bardach predicts that the most likely member of the powerful Castro family's next generation to emerge as a future Cuban leader is Raul's first son, Alejandro, 43, a colonel and rising star in the powerful interior ministry The  controversial book also discloses the explosive inside story of how Raul Castro purged two close lieutenants of his older brother. Carlos Lage, the economics czar, and Felipe Perez Roque, the foreign minister, had both been considered possible future leaders, but were ousted for making jokes and poking fun at Fidel & Raul after a surveillance sting operation.
In classic old communist style, the two men were forced to write embarrassing resignation letters to the Cuban Communist press for political sins which are still unclear. Raul Castro who was previously the veteran defence minister, moved many of his allies from the armed forces into virtually every area of Cuban government and the economy - apparently inspired by the incredible success of the Powerful People's Liberation Army of China.
Ms Ann Bardach states that Fidel Castro's pride and obstinacy almost proved fatal when he rejected the recommended surgery in 2006 - a colostomy. Fidel Castro insisted on a much riskier operation as he did not want to suffer the embarrassing indignity of living with an attached pissing bag.
The riskier operation failed and Fidel Castro was nearly killed by a peritonitis infection. After a life-saving colostomy was finally performed, Ms Bardach reports that Castro was distraught. "Fidel was crying," a source present in the hospital told her. "He cried several times that day. Fidel was devastated."
  Ann's contacts at the Cuban medical system told her that Castro was fed intravenously for five months after the surgery and lost 45 pounds. A famous Spanish doctor brought into Cuba to treat Fidel feared he was "starving to death" and gradually restored solid foods to a highly restrictive diet.
  Fidel's occasional photo shoots with visiting left-wing Latin American proteges like Hugo Chavez, Castro has abandoned his old uniform of olive fatigues.
Instead, Fidel prefers the athletic looking track suits because they hide the hated colostomy bag - emblematic of his transformation from womanizing Cuban revolutionary heart-throb to frail octogenarian.
Fidel however had a great romantic life with at least 11 children to prove it.
We should all be so lucky.

FIDEL CASTRO  CUBA

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