Mirta Díaz-Balart, Fidel Castro’s first wife and mother of one of his children, has died

Mirta Diaz-Balart,first wife of Fidel Castro and mother of the former Cuban leader’s first child, He died at the age of 95announced this Saturday his grandson, Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, on his account on the social network X.

“Surrounded by much love, my dear grandmother Mirta Díaz-Balart Gutiérrez has passed away. A great woman has left us,” wrote the grandson of the historic Cuban leader, accompanying his message with family photographs where he can be seen with his grandmother.

Mirta Díaz-Balart, who lived in Spain, was Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart’s motherknown as “Fidelito”, the eldest son of Fidel Castro, who committed suicide in 2018.

Born in 1928 in the Cuban capital, daughter of a politician who in the 1940s became mayor of a Cuban town, Mirta Díaz-Balart married Fidel Castro in 1948. when they were both students: she studied Philosophy and he studied Law. A year later “Fidelito” was born, and the couple divorced in 1955when Fidel was exiled in the United States.

The separation occurred, according to Díaz-Balart herself, not only because of Castro’s revolutionary activity but also because of her husband’s infidelity with the famous Naty Revuelta – also married – who gave Castro a daughter.

Barely a year after her divorce, Mirta married again, this time to Emilio Núñez Blanco, the son of a Cuban diplomat who later became an important anti-Castro activist.

“There were never any bad words during our separation, we broke up in a civilized manner. I have never wished him any harm (…) I remember my marriage to Fidel as something distant, but also as a very beautiful period of my youth. I always wished him good things,” the woman recalled about her divorce, in an interview in 2016 with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959Mirta Díaz-Balart had to go into exile. However, she was able to travel to Cuba on several occasions to reunite with her son.

The custody battle for the child, which was ultimately won by Fidel Castro, gave rise to a veritable saga full of twists and turns.

“I am affected, yes, and I have felt sad about his death, although that story happened more than 60 years ago. These days I have prayed for his soul, I am a Christian,” she said, in turn, regarding Castro’s death.

Over the years, the Díaz-Balart family ended up becoming one of the pillars of the large Cuban colony living in exile in the American city of Miami.

One of Mirta Díaz-Balart’s nephews and cousin of “Fidelito” is the Republican U.S. congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, a fierce anti-Castro.

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) had at least seven children from four different women. With his last partner, Dalia Soto del Valle, he had five children.