MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Living myth Fidel Castro, “a man with a superior intellect by heartless”

Dissident Cuban neurosurgeon Hilda Molina: “a heartless intellect is an intellect to be feared”

Dissident Cuban neurosurgeon Hilda Molina, now living in Argentina, said in an interview that Fidel Castro once felt “a very marked inclination” towards her.

The physician, who arrived in Argentina in June 2009 to be reunited with her son and grandson after 15 years of separation imposed by the Cuban government’s refusal to authorize her departure from the island, described Castro as a “living myth” and a man with a “superior intellect, but heartless.”

“Fidel has never stopped ruling the island,” Molina said, adding that the only changes in Cuba under the presidency of his brother, Raul Castro are that “now there are cell phones and computers for sale.”

Fidel Castro effectively stepped down in July 2006 after being stricken with serious illness. His younger sibling was officially elevated to the presidency in February 2008.

“When Raul became president he made promises, but nothing changed. There is enormous repression and people who peacefully oppose the government suffer enormously,” Molina said.

Now 66, she remembers that she knew Fidel Castro when she was a medical student in the 1970s.

“During those years I was already a little disappointed, though I believed in the revolution. He seemed to me an egomaniac. The second meeting that led to lasting ties with him was in 1987. He seemed to me a superior intellect. But if I had known him in 1959 I would never have followed his revolution,” she said.

“His eyes are those of a body and mind without heart. And a heartless intellect is an intellect to be feared,” she said.

Molina, who will launch “Mi Verdad” (My Truth), a book about her life, confessed that Castro was “extremely affectionate” with her and always went out of his way to praise her. She said that the ex-Cuban president always sent her flowers and that he even once offered her a car.

“He would present me to his international friends as a private possession, as a charm, a pet. But in the end that person said ‘No more,’ and didn’t leave the island on a raft but resigned and said “I’m not working any more for a system that discriminates among Cuban patients,” she said.