Sister of dictator Fidel Castro, Juanita Castro, who
died on Friday at age 90, said she will not be attending her brother's funeral
in Cuba. Despite expressing sorrow over
the death of her brother, she said on Saturday she wouldn't be returning to
Cuba in her lifetime.
Juanita has been
living in Miami since 1965 after accusing her brother a year earlier of turning
Cuba into 'an enormous prison surrounded by water'.
On Saturday, she said the pain of her brother's
death brought old wounds to the surface. She also put rumors to rest that she
would be heading to Cuba for the memorial and said she will remain in the
United States, the Miami Herald reported.
'In light of the bad rumors that said I was going to
go to Cuba for the funeral, I want to clarify that I have never returned to the
island, nor do I have plans to do so. 'I have fought alongside exiles, arm and
arm, during their most active and intense stages of struggle in past decades,
and I respect the feelings of all,' Juanita said in a statement.
'I do not rejoice over the death of any human being,
much less when that person is someone with my blood and surnames. 'As a sister
of Fidel, I am experiencing the loss of a human being who shared my blood, as
happened with the deaths of my siblings Ramón and Angelita,' Juanita said in a
statement.
Juanita said she's been exiled in Miami for 51 years
like others who had to flee Cuba under her brother's regime. She said she suffered a double-edged sword
of losing her connection to her family in Cuba and being rejected by exiles in
Miami because she was a Castro.
'I hope that we can find, not a way toward
confrontation and hatred, but toward one that finally binds all Cubans,' she
said. Juanita is one of four of Castro's
sisters and was supportive in the late 1950s of her brother's effort to
overthrow Fulgencio Batista.
However, when he insisted on giving up the family
plantation, a rift was created that never healed, according to ABC 10
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