Castro Kin Are Reunited in Atlanta

A granddaughter of Fidel Castro was reunited Friday with her mother, who defected from Cuba last week and then pleaded that the girl be allowed to join her in the United States.

“I’m going to meet a lot of new people. I have to learn the language. And I want to study a lot, something I could not do in Cuba,” Alina-Maria Salgado-Fernandez, 16, said during a news conference Friday night in this west Georgia city.

The girl and her mother, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, then toasted the new year with champagne. Joining them was Elena Amos, the wealthy Cuban-American who helped Fernandez sneak out of Cuba.

Alina-Maria left Havana on Friday morning for Miami. There she was whisked aboard a jet to Atlanta, where she met her mother in private. Then the two came to Columbus, where Fernandez has been staying with Amos.

Reminded by reporters that there are many Cuban Americans who want to be reunited with Cuban relatives, Alina-Maria said through an interpreter: “My mother and I feel for everyone who doesn’t have their mother. I can’t explain why they let me go and don’t let others go.”

Fernandez, an outspoken critic of her father’s regime, said she now can speak more freely about it.

“From now on I will say what I want to say,” she said.

In Cuba, Fernandez was under virtual house arrest and under constant surveillance.

In contrast to her mother’s clandestine departure from Cuba, when she was disguised in a wig and used a fake passport, the daughter left the country with the approval of the government.