Are Fidel Castro and Justin Trudeau ‘Father and Son’? Here’s What We Found

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau was about four years old when his family first visited Cuba in 1976.

On X (formerly Twitter), a post made by an account named ‘@WallStreetSilv’, which links Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro has now gone viral.

The post shares photos of Trudeau and Castro, claiming that they are father and son. It also shows a photo of Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, standing close to Castro. 

Another version of this claim shows a black-and-white photo of Margaret, a baby, and Castro.

This claim has been on the internet since 2016 – reportedly after Trudeau issued a statement after Castro’s death in 2016 –  and has resurfaced every now and then.

Who is the baby?: Firstly, the baby in the photo isn’t Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. So who is the infant?

• We carried out a reverse image search on the photo, which led us to the same photo on the stock image website Alamy.

• Here, the caption noted that it was taken in 1976, and showed Castro holding Pierre and Margaret Trudeau’s youngest son, Michel.

A similar photo is available in the archives of the Canadian government’s website.

What do we know about Justin Trudeau?: Trudeau, born in December 1971, was around four years old during this visit to Cuba. 

• Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, had also been the country’s Prime Minister for 15 years, winning four elections.

• He married Margaret Sinclair in January 1971, and the couple welcomed Justin, the first of their three children, in December that year. 

As several news organisations reported, the Trudeaus visited Cuba in 1976, marking the first time the leader of a country affiliated with NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) had visited the country, which was under Prime Minister Fidel Castro's regime then. 

This archival news bulletin by CTV News discusses the Trudeau family’s first official visit to the nation, which was dubbed ‘Three Nights in Havana’.

Given that Pierre Trudeau had been prime minister of Canada since 1968, it would have been nearly impossible that his prior visit to Cuba would have gone undocumented, much less unnoticed. 

Since the Trudeaus’ first visit to Cuba was in 1976, during which Justin Trudeau was around four years old, it seems highly unlikely that former Cuban PM Fidel Castro fathered him.

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