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11/02/09 - Miami Herald - Cuban magazine pans Juanita's book

Juanita Castro's book "Fidel and Raúl: My brothers" did not get a good
review in La Jiribilla, a magazine of the Culture Ministry, which described
it as "a commercial operation in bad taste and low moral standing."

The book is "a pamphlet created to roll out assertions that are frankly
unimportant," the magazine says. (See our Oct. 24 blog item, "'Shocking
revelations' about the Castros...")

"Through techniques of recycling and political marketing that include
publicity, manipulation and sensationalism, the anti-Castro industry in
Miami [...] has marketed a new product, the memoirs of Juanita Castro," the
magazine says in an article titled "Memoirs to be forgotten."

The book's publication "is all the more shocking precisely because, in order
to distance himself from the habitual frivolity like no other Western leader
in more than 50 years, Fidel Castro has made an effort to preserve the
privacy of his family from the avatars of his public activities," the
article says.

"If it is true that in the early 1960s the author worked for the CIA, she
would have been just one of thousands of Cubans who - in exchange for gifts,
money or other motivations, among them hatred, the desire for revenge, and
intolerance - worked for the CIA and lent themselves to serve as pawns of
U.S. policy against Cuba.

"Were this the case, the difference is that she also conspired against close
relatives. There is no merit or exceptionality in that behavior, only the
opposite," the article says. "The truth is clear: Fidel Castro is the
victim, the one offended, the individual who was conspired against and who
has maintained a silence that honors and elevates him."
-Renato Pérez Pizarro.