COTTLEVILLE, Mo., March 5 (UPI) -- Fidel Castro's estranged daughter said Washington should maintain its embargo of Cuba until Havana does something significant, like free political prisoners.
Alina Fernandez, a sharp critic of her father who fled Cuba with a fake Spanish passport in 1993 and now hosts a Miami radio talk show, said she expected normal relations eventually to develop because of U.S. agribusiness' desire for increased Cuban trade.
But "if they're going to lift it, there should be preconditions," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
She said she regarded her uncle, Raul Castro, 77, who took over last year when her 82-year-old father stepped down as president, as more practical and less ideological than her father.
But she said she saw no fundamental changes so far in the repressive nature of the regime since her uncle assumed power.
Fernandez, 52, spoke for about 45 minutes to about 250 people at a St. Louis-area two-year college.
In her talk, she outlined her own life story and that of her mother, Natalia Revuelta, who had an extramarital relationship with Castro in the 1950s and 1960s.
She said she remembered Castro's visiting her family's home at night, but didn't know he was her father until she was 10 years old, the newspaper said.
Fernandez said she wasn't close to Castro and became a dissident in 1989, although she was never jailed.
Fernandez's life story is being made into a movie, co-written, directed and produced by Academy Award winner Robert Moresco, who co-wrote and produced "Crash" and directed "10th & Wolf."
