Castro's Sister a CIA Spy

In her memoir, My Brothers Fidel and Raul: The Secret Story released on Monday, Juanita Castro, the younger sister of Fidel Castro has revealed that she worked in collaboration with the US Central Investigation Agency (CIA) in the 1960's.

Juanita, 76, initially was in favor of her brother when he overthrew the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba but was disenchanted by the indiscriminate use of power by her brother used to get rid of opponents and his communist turn.

Juanita started working for the CIA in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs invasion. She says that she was persuaded by the wife of the then Brazilian ambassador to Cuba to meet the CIA officials, whom she met in Mexico. She agreed to help the CIA for gathering information, but refused to accept any form of remuneration or be a part of any violent activity, making that her sole condition.

She lived in Cuba till 1964, i.e., till her mother was alive, because she believed that her mother's presence saved her from Fidel's persecution, who was angry about her helping anti-Castro Cubans. "My brothers could ignore what I did - or appear to ignore it - so as not to hurt my mom, but that didn't mean I didn't have problems ... everything was becoming more dangerously complicated", Castro has written in her book.

In 1964, she fled to Miami, where she was initially viewed as a communist spy. She later founded a non-profit organization to work against the Cuban government. She stopped working with the CIA, when they asked her to make statements to the effect, that communism was not a threat in Latin America.

Juanita has not had any contact with her brothers for more than four decades now. Her memoir has been written in Spanish in collaboration with journalist Maria Antonieta Collins and has been published by Santillana USA.