HAVANA - President Fidel Castro says he is "eternally infatuated with the feminine sex" and still falls in love easily but "now in a mote platonic way", a Cuban newspaper reported yesterday.
Dr Castro, always extremely reticent on questions about his private life, revealed some of his views on love and women in the Juventud Rebelde paper. "One always likes it when somebody is in love with him, but I prefer to do the loving because when somebody was in love with me I felt pursued and didn't know what to do, as if they were harassing or besieging me," the 70 year old president said.
Public record shows President Castro was formally married once, from 1949 to 1955. His wife gave birth to a son in 1950 but it is public knowledge that he later had several children out of wedlock. One of them, Ms Alina Fernandez Revueltas, who now lives in Miami, recently sold six love letters written by Dr Castro to her mother when he was in prison in 1953 and 1954.
Dr Castro's advice to lovelorn women was: "Women should never show a man that she loves him too much... because he'll become puffed up with self importance. . . Indifference is the great stimulus of love."
Asked about what, in his eyes, characterised a Cuban woman, he answered: "That she is very sweet." To the question, "and what about Cuban men; they say they are tender?" he replied: "Well, I couldn't tell you. I never had a Cuban boyfriend."