Fidel Castro. - File photo

In 1959 Fidel and Raul Castro eventually deposed the dictator Fulgencio Batista after a revolution which first began in 1953 with an attack on the Moncada army barracks in the city of Santiago de Cuba. As the Miami Herald reports after her brothers came to power Juanita Castro, now 76, found herself helping to establish clinics and hospitals out in the Cuban countryside. Very soon though Juanita became disillusioned with her brothers' revolution as she saw opponents of the new regime being imprisoned or executed and private properties being confiscated. Speaking about her book, which is titled Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers. The Secret History, on a show broadcast on Univisión-Noticias 23, she explained:

I begin to lose the enthusiasm when I see so much injustice and I say, this is not possible, they are wrong. Someone here is doing things badly

And she began to realize that it was her older brothers who were issuing the orders that were causing the injustice that she was witnessing. According to Reuters, in 1961 Fidel Castro was to surprise his younger sister again when, after having initially denied that he was a communist, he announced that he was a Marxist-Leninist and would remain so for the rest of his life. But Juanita believes her brother took the communist path in order to consolidate his power. And the Soviet Union could provide the support he needed to remain in power. The nationalist democratic revolution that Fidel Castro had promised was abandoned and in its place came a one-party state. In the same year as her brother's dramatic conversion to the communist cause Juanita found herself recruited by the CIA after meeting with one of its agents in a hotel room in Mexico City. Her codename was 'Donna'. She was recruited to the CIA by Virginia Leitao da Cunha, the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba, who had sheltered Juanita and other revolutionaries in 1958 whilst the fight to topple Fulgencio Batista was still ongoing. For the next three years the CIA was feeding information to and receiving information from the sister of the two most powerful men in Cuba. It was a period, notes the Earth Times, during which a CIA-trained force of exiles launched an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba and World War Three nearly started when the U.S. confronted the Soviet Union over missiles the latter country had sited on Cuba. Furthermore, as the Miami Herald confirms, the U.S. were suspected of plotting to kill Fidel Castro during the early 1960s, the Cuban leader himself stating that there were over 600 such plots. Juanita, assisted by her mother Lina Ruz, also helped critics and opponents of her brothers' regime avoid jail and, sometimes, execution. However, when her mother died in 1963 Juanita began to suspect that her life was set to become more dangerous because of her activities. It was Raul Castro, apparently aware of some of those activities and of his brother's anger with their younger sister, who obtained a visa for Juanita to visit their sister Emma in Mexico. The Earth Times quotes Juanita as saying that her brothers were not aware of her links with the CIA. Shortly after arriving in Mexico the woman who had fought against one dictator, only to find him replaced by a person from her own family considered by many to be a dictator also, was speaking at a news conference and denouncing the Cuban regime. From that day onwards Juanita has frequently criticized the manner in which her brothers, she hasn't spoken to either of them since she left the island in 1964, have ruled Cuba. Fidel Castro was Prime Minister of the island nation from 1959 until 1976 and President from 1976 until 2008. Raul Castro assumed the office of President in 2008, having been the First Vice-President for 32 years. Meanwhile Juanita eventually made her way to the U.S., settling in Miami where, in 1973, she became the owner of a chemist's store. She sold the store two years ago. In her book, published in Spanish by Grupo Santillana.and on sale from Monday in the U.S., Mexico, Colombia and Spain, Juanita makes clear that she informed the CIA that she would not become involved in violence against her brothers or any members of their government. Nor she says did she accept any money for her services. Regarding her "betrayal" of the most important man in Cuba for nearly 50 years she has written:

Did I feel remorse about betraying Fidel by agreeing to meet with his enemies? No, for one simple reason: I didn't betray him. He betrayed me. He betrayed the thousands of us who suffered and fought for the revolution that he had offered, one that was generous and just and would bring peace and democracy to Cuba, and which, as he himself had promised, would be as 'Cuban as palm trees