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 Entertainment | Books | December 2005 
Author Tells of Her Mexican Affair with a Young Fidel Castro in New Book
 Author Tells of Her Mexican Affair with a Young Fidel Castro in New Book
| | Fidel Castro as a young revolutionary. |
When Fidel Castro came to Mexico's capital in the 1950s to plan a revolution in Cuba, he had a steamy, nine-month fling with Spanish-born Isabel Custodio, according to a recently published book by Custodio herself.
"El Amor me absolvera," or "Love Will Absolve Me," tells the story of Castro's time with Custodio, who says she met the eventual Cuban President through her parents, noted leftists who fled the regime of the dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain and lived in Cuba before coming to Mexico.
"The Secret Passion of Fidel Castro in Mexico," reads the book's subtitle.
Custodio claims Castro's government has neither confirmed or denied the relationship, and she herself has refused to answer questions about whether she has kept in contact with the Cuban president since.
She also refuses to divulge her age or how old she was when she first met Castro. According to an interview published in several Mexican newspapers Tuesday, Custodio was convinced Castro was in love with her and that he told a mutual friend "I'm going to marry her," shortly after first laying eyes on her outside a Mexican prison where he had been held briefly.
Custodio said she felt obligated to write the book, speaking of the affair nearly five decades after it ended, because the passion involved touched her so.
In the interview, she refused to divulge why the relationship came to an end, saying only that readers will find much of the book works up to that climax.
"All love stories, in order to be love stories and be beautiful, have to come to an end," she said.
Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, which replaced the military that existed before the revolution, traces its roots to Dec. 2, 1956, when 82 rebels landed on the island on a yacht – the Granma – that sailed from Mexico. Castro was among the fewer than two dozen rebels who survived to reach the mountains, where they launched a guerrilla war against then-President Fulgencio Batista. |
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