Juanita Castro, Sister of Fidel Castro Who Broke From Him, Dies at 90

Juanita Castro, a sister of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro who broke with him over his brutal crackdown on dissent in the early 1960s, passed away on Monday in Miami at the age of 90. After collaborating with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), she fled Cuba in 1964 and never spoke to her brother again.

Maria Antonieta Collins, a journalist who assisted Ms. Castro in writing her memoir published in 2009, confirmed her death on Instagram.

In her memoir, Ms. Castro revealed her clandestine activities for the first time. She wrote that she communicated with the CIA, referring to it as “the company,” using shortwave radio in Havana. The CIA would play the “Fascination Waltz” followed by a coded message each day at 7 p.m. If there was no message, they would broadcast the overture from “Madama Butterfly.”

Juanita Castro initially supported the uprising that overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. However, she became disillusioned with Fidel’s move to establish Cuba as a one-party Communist state. She stated in a 2009 interview that Fidel had betrayed the democratic Cuban revolution.

From 1961 to 1964, Juanita Castro worked for the CIA under the codename “Donna.” She helped anti-Castro dissidents and CIA agents avoid capture and exposure, including finding safe houses and assisting people in escaping the island.

In her memoir, she mentioned that she made it clear to her CIA recruiter that she would not participate in any violent plots against her brothers. This was shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, organized by the CIA, and during a time when the agency was plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Juanita Castro’s collaboration with the CIA involved smuggling money, messages, and documents to Havana packaged in cans of food. She also collected coded messages left by operatives buried at the base of highway signs in Cuba.

After the death of their mother in 1963, Juanita Castro felt increasingly at risk and decided to go into exile the following year. She first went to Mexico and later settled in South Florida, where she lived quietly for decades.

Juanita Castro’s survivors include her brother Raúl and her sister Enma.

Despite not speaking to Fidel for over five decades, Juanita Castro expressed her disapproval of the spontaneous celebrations that took place in Miami when he fell ill in 2006 and upon his death in 2016. She believed it was disrespectful to rejoice in anyone’s sickness or death.