The question seemed simple enough.
“For years, rumors have circulated that Justin Trudeau, the former Canadian prime minister, might be your half-brother. What are your thoughts on this?”
Alina Fernandez, Fidel Castro’s 70-year-old daughter, did not laugh or deny the claim. Instead, after a brief and somewhat uncomfortable pause, she offered a cryptic response.
“The only thing I can tell you is that his mother used to visit the country [Cuba] very often…”
With that, she smiled. Could she be privy to information that remains unknown to the rest of us?
Fernandez’s intriguing remarks on NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich Tonight this week have once again fueled the online buzz suggesting Justin Trudeau might be the secret son of the late communist leader.
The idea was first mooted a decade ago in the immediate aftermath of Castro’s death.
However, back then, it was quashed following concerted denials by the governments of both Canada and Cuba. The state machinery in Ottawa and Havana was deployed to crush the rumors. It was, officials said, merely a conspiracy theory concocted in the informational Wild West of the internet.
However, Fernandez’s comments, at the very least, have made the evidence worthy of another look.
Margaret Trudeau smiles as Cuban President Fidel Castro holds Justin’s brother Michel after the Trudeaus arrived in Havana, Cuba, in 1976.
What lawyers would call the prima facie, or most obvious, case for a link between Castro and Justin is… their faces.
Compare Justin to a young, pre-beard Castro and the resemblance is instantly noticeable. The long straight noses, the shape of their chins, and their eyes, and the smiles, too, are similar. Note, too, Justin’s thick head of dark hair. By middle age, his father Pierre’s hairline had already beaten a long retreat.
Then there is the long, and what many see as bizarre, relationship between the Trudeau and Castro families, which began during the Cold War.
In 1976, Pierre Trudeau, as Canadian prime minister, became the first NATO leader to visit Cuba since the Castro revolution. ‘Viva Castro!’ he exclaimed publicly, leaving the US government baffled.
Photographs showed Justin’s mother, Margaret Trudeau, handing his baby brother to Castro at Havana airport, with both of them looking adoringly at the infant. Later, the baby would frequently be misidentified as Justin.
Justin, aged 28, greets Fidel Castro at his father’s funeral in Montreal on October 3, 2000
Castro observes the May Day parade at the Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, May 1, 1998.
How a Controversial Eulogy Fueled Castro Questions
A bromance between Castro and Pierre continued for over two decades. When Pierre died in 2000, Castro, regarded as a pariah by the entire rest of the West, flew to Montreal to be an honorary pallbearer.
In an extraordinarily emotional scene at the funeral, he bear-hugged Justin, then aged 28, before firmly gripping him by both arms and staring at him.
Justin made three personal trips with his family to Cuba and then, in November 2016, his first official visit as Prime Minister. The ailing Castro, aged 90, was too sick to receive him. Ten days later, he died.
Justin then issued a statement that outraged and perplexed the Western world as he declared his ‘deep sorrow’ over the death of the brutal dictator’s death.
‘Mr Castro’ was, according to the Canadian, a ‘legendary revolutionary and orator’ who ‘served his people.’
‘I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away,’ he said.
‘It was also a real honor to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raul Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.’
There was no mention of those who suffered under the Castro regime.
Marco Rubio, who is Cuban-American, said at the time: ‘Is this a real statement or parody? Because if this is a real statement from the PM of Canada, it is shameful and embarrassing.’
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, also Cuban-American, accused Justin of ‘slobbering adulation’ for Castro.
Justin is dating pop star Katy Perry.
President Donald Trump has repeated rumors about Justin and Castro.
Trump Revives Long-Running Castro Rumours About Trudeau
The statement led to ridicule and other satirical ‘Trudeau Eulogies’ on Twitter.
One read: ‘Mr Stalin will be fondly remembered for increasing tourism to the otherwise unwelcoming Siberia.’
It also led many to wonder if there could be another reason for Justin’s blind praise for a brutal dictator.
The rumor mill started up again in 2018 when Castro’s eldest son Fidelito, a 68-year-old nuclear physicist who strongly resembled him, died by suicide.
Initial unconfirmed reports suggested he had left a note saying he was Justin’s half-brother. But the claim of a note was never substantiated, and the link was denied by the Canadian government.
Six years later, Donald Trump reinvigorated the claim in his book Save America.
‘His [Justin’s] mother was beautiful and wild,’ Trump wrote. ‘In the 1970s, she would go “clubbing” with the Rolling Stones, but she was also somehow associated with Fidel Castro. She said he was “the [most handsome] man I’ve ever met,” and a lot of people say that Justin is his son. He swears that he isn’t, but how the hell would he know!
“Castro had good hair, the “father” didn’t. Justin has good hair, and has become a Communist just like Castro.”
Trump went on to suggest that there was something genetic about Justin’s leftist political path.
‘He’s turned very liberal, actually they say he’s the son of Fidel Castro, and could be,’ Trump told a podcast at the time. ‘Anything’s possible in this world, you know?’
Actor Ryan O’Neal and Margaret at Studio 54 in New York City in 1979.
Margaret on the dance floor at Studio 54.
The Timeline That Undermines the Castro Rumour
Whatever the reason Trump made his claims about Justin’s mother, they do get to the heart of the matter.
Margaret was aged just 22, and a self-described ‘hippy flower child’ who had been traveling around Morocco, when she met and secretly married the urbane Pierre, who was 51 and had already been prime minister for three years.
For Margaret, it was a bewildering transition and one she did not adapt to well.
She fought a long battle with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and came to see her life as first lady as a ‘prison,’ accusing Pierre of putting her in a ‘birdcage.’
She once described her husband as ‘old, with old skin and old toes.’
Before giving a speech at a state dinner in Venezuela, she ate peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus, and embarrassment ensued.
Her life was plastered across tabloid newspapers as she was spotted hanging out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54, cozying up to actor Ryan O’Neal and tennis star Bjorn Borg, and partying and smoking marijuana with the Rolling Stones.
The Trudeaus split in 1977 and she later admitted affairs during their relationship, although not with the band.
‘It’s really embarrassing. It just isn’t true, Mick Jagger said. ‘She just came for a two-night concert. She just wanted to have a good time. She was a ‘very sick girl in search of something,’ Jagger added. ‘She found it, but not with me. I wouldn’t go near her with a barge pole.’
Given her remarkable free-spirited life, it would not be out of the realm of possibility that Margaret, now aged 77, might have decided to have a relationship with Castro as a young woman.
However, the crucial piece of evidence that shows she did not is the timing of Justin’s birth.
Her only documented trip to Cuba was the historic official state visit with Pierre in 1976.
She had married Pierre on March 4, 1971, and Justin, the eldest of their children, was born on Christmas Day 1971.
Experts have established that Justin must have been conceived between March 16 and April 22, 1971.
On March 16, 1971, Pierre, as prime minister, was in Parliament answering a question about pipelines. He spent the rest of March and April in Ottawa.
At that point, the only communication between his office and Castro’s Cuba had been by letter.
It would seem implausible that his new wife, and the first lady of Canada, could have secretly left the country for Cuba and a romantic assignation with its leader, whom she had not previously met.
Robert Wright, a Canadian historian who wrote the book Three Nights in Havana about the relationship between the Castro and Trudeau families, has described the idea as ‘preposterous.’
Margaret and Justin arrive for an appearance by King Charles III and Queen Camilla for the State Opening of Parliament during their official visit to Canada last May.
In May 1977, Margaret was spotted partying with the Rolling Stones.
Castro Paternity Rumours Refuse to Go Away
And, perhaps most pertinently of all, Margaret herself has never given credence to the claim despite revealing her wild life in a series of tell-all memoirs.
It is also worth noting that the young Pierre, before he lost his hair, also bore a passing resemblance to Castro.
Still, despite the convincing evidence to the contrary, some continue to believe there is something to the rumors.
‘Do you plan to call him [Justin] and maybe find out?’ Fernandez, Castro’s daughter, was asked.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘If he wants, he’s welcome, but I won’t. I think he keeps that to himself, and you have to respect that.’
