Fidel Castro still blocking Cuba changes: sister

MIAMI (Reuters) - Fidel Castro is still influencing the government of President Raul Castro in Cuba and holding back any moves toward a democratic opening on the island, the exiled younger sister of both men said on Tuesday.

Juanita Castro, 76, who has been a firm critic of her brothers' communist rule in Cuba during 45 years of exile, this week revealed she collaborated with the CIA for three years before leaving her Caribbean homeland for good in 1964.

The revelation, made in her memoir "Fidel and Raul, My Brothers, the Secret History" published on Monday, added a previously unknown twist to the saga of the Castro family which has been closely entwined with Cuba's history since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution grabbed the attention of the world.

Afflicted by age and ill-health, Fidel Castro, 83, handed over the formal presidency of Cuba last year to his younger brother Raul Castro, 78, a former defense minister widely seen as less charismatic but more pragmatic than the older Castro.

Juanita Castro, who has not spoken to either of her brothers since leaving Cuba in 1964, said she believed Fidel Castro was still influencing Cuba's leadership by keeping the the one-party communist system he established firmly in place. He still holds the powerful post of first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party's central committee.

"There are two people currently governing Cuba, (Raul) is not the only one ruling, Fidel is also ruling from his sickbed, from his retirement, he's also calling the shots, as it were," she told Reuters in an interview in Miami where she lives.

She sees the influence of Fidel, with whom she split politically after he turned toward communism, as an obstacle to possible reforms moving Cuba away from one-party socialism at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to improve ties between Washington and Havana.

"I think Fidel is blocking things a bit," she said.

"It could be Fidel has the dominant voice, that's the impression I have," Juanita Castro said. Slight, bespectacled and petite, her voice strengthens when she accuses her brother Fidel Castro of hijacking the national democratic credentials of the 1959 revolution to then impose Marxism on the island.

"He betrayed the Cuban revolution which was democratic and as Cuban as palm trees, as he himself used to say," she said.

When Castro's serious illness in 2006 led to Raul Castro initially picking up the reins of government, there was speculation his more pragmatic style could lead to liberalizing reforms in Cuba's centralized economy and political system.

But although Raul has introduced some reforms to try to cut state spending and boost productivity, he has made clear he has no intention of abandoning communism and embracing capitalism.

The Cuban leadership is demanding that Obama completely end the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island.

"THAT'S ENOUGH"

Cuba's government, which routinely dismisses critics as mercenaries in the pay of Washington, has not yet reacted to Juanita Castro's revelation that she worked for the CIA in Cuba between 1961 and 1964 by helping opponents of Castro's government, including CIA agents, to escape detection and capture. She said she also helped many to leave the island.

Juanita Castro wrote in her memoir that under the codename "Donna", she used a shortwave radio in Havana to receive instructions from her CIA handlers, although she insists she received no payment from the U.S. espionage agency.

She told Reuters she would like to see an end to the decades of U.S.-Cuban enmity dating back to the Cold War when Cuba was a Soviet ally in the U.S. backyard. More than a million Cubans are in exile, most in the United States.

"I want there to be a true reconciliation between all the Cuban people, so that we are no longer separated by politics and hostile attitudes ... I seek the freedom of my country above all other things," she added.

But she offered no excuses for having worked for the CIA, Fidel Castro's arch-enemy which he credits with being behind hundreds of failed plans to assassinate or topple him.

"I don't think I need to be forgiven for anything, I've fulfilled my duty as a Cuban, I've tried to do the best I could in my life to defend the freedom of my country," she said.

"The betrayal wasn't mine. It was Fidel's," she added.

Recalling that most Cubans including herself backed the 1959 revolution that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista, she said: "We, the Cuban people, didn't fight ... to substitute one tyranny for another, to substitute Batista with Fidel so he could impose his Marxist-Leninist government".

She said that if she was able to speak now to her brother Raul Castro, Cuba's president, she would urge him to end communist rule in Cuba. "(I'd tell him) That's enough ... It's time to put an end to this great tragedy of our country".

"I'd ask God to grant me the life to see changes in Cuba," she said, but added she would seek no political role.