Who is ‘Cancer’, grandson of Raúl Castro who appears as Cuba’s interlocutor with the USA

Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro is the grandson of former Cuban president Raúl Castro. Getty Images via BBC The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, reported on Friday (13/3) that his country and the United States have started talks amid the serious economic crisis that the island is experiencing, at a time of increasing pressure from the Donald Trump government on Havana. The announcement confirms recent information about possible contacts between the two countries, which brought to the public a previously little-known figure. 🗒️Do you have any reporting suggestions? Send it to g1 This is Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, 41 years old. Known as “Raulito” and El Cangrejo (“The Crab”, in Spanish), he is the grandson, right-hand man and bodyguard of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, 94 years old — and great-nephew of Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution. “Raulito” does not hold any position in the Díaz-Canel government, but some press agencies indicate that he would be Cuba’s interlocutor in confidential meetings held with advisers to the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Havana did not explicitly deny this information. See the videos trending on g1: See the videos trending on g1 Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro appears sitting behind Díaz-Canel, among Communist Party officials, in the video of Friday’s speech. The president declared that the objective of the conversations is “to seek solutions through dialogue for the bilateral differences we have between the two nations”. Previously, United States President Donald Trump stated that his government is “talking” with Cuban authorities and suggested the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of control of the island, which, according to him, “has no energy, no money” and faces serious humanitarian problems. The press organizations that reported alleged contacts before this Friday’s confirmation indicated that one of these meetings would have taken place in February, on the sidelines of a meeting of Caribbean leaders in Saint Kitts and Nevis, where Marco Rubio’s advisors would have met with the grandson of the historic Cuban leader. For at least two decades, Raúl Guillermo has been the bodyguard of his grandfather, the former president of Cuba Raúl Castro Getty Images via BBC On the American side, Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart declared that the United States government spoke to “several people around Raúl Castro”, but that these were not official negotiations. The mention of Raúl Guillermo’s name as an interlocutor by the Cuban side highlighted the weight of the Castro surname in an opaque political elite, in which the internal balances of power remain a mystery. But who is Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro? And what is its role in the structure of Cuba’s communist regime? Raúl Castro’s favorite Fidel Castro (1926-2016) concentrated power in Cuba for decades, as the absolute leader of the communist political system established after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which remains in force on the island. Eight years before he died, Fidel passed power to his younger brother, Raúl Castro. “Fidel had kept his family very far away,” explains Cuban political scientist and historian Armando Chaguaceda to BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish-language service. “Fidel was him and that’s it. The family was left out. But, with Raúl, the family members acquired greater notoriety.” Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the “Crab”, is the son of Déborah Castro Espín, the eldest of Raúl Castro’s four children, and former division general Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja (1960-2022), one of the most influential figures in the Cuban regime. Rodríguez López-Calleja ran the Gaesa military business conglomerate, a holding that controls broad sectors of the island’s economy, from tourism and retail trade to financial remittances and port services. His son Raúl Guillermo was Raúl Castro’s first grandson. The former president has maintained an especially close relationship with him since childhood, as his paternal cousin, Carlos Rodríguez Halley, who is three years younger, reveals to the BBC. “As the firstborn of Raúl Castro’s grandchildren, Raulito was always very attached to his grandfather,” he says. “Very young, when I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade, I went to live with him.” The decision was important within the family. After all, she helped the young man grow up alongside the then Cuban leader and helped to consolidate a bond that, over time, would facilitate his integration into the circle of power. “Not even his father was very present”, according to the cousin. “His father worked a lot, and since he was very young, they only saw each other.” Raúl Guillermo followed a training that combined civil and military education. He studied at the school known as Los Camilitos, an institution that prepares young Cubans for careers in the armed forces. He later studied accounting and finance at the University of Havana. His cousin describes “Raulito” as someone who grew up in a bubble. “He was raised in a very specific environment, always surrounded by young soldiers who were brought from the field and indoctrinated into the armed forces”, says Rodríguez Halley. “These men were his surroundings.” He highlights that, like Raúl Castro’s other grandchildren, Raúl Guillermo grew up in a privileged environment, with little contact with the daily life of a country hit by decades of shortages and deterioration of public services. His nickname El Cangrejo came about when he was a child, within his own family, because he was born with polydactyly. “He was born with six fingers,” says his cousin. “He had surgery when he was very little and there was a scar that, now, is barely noticeable.” In terms of personality, Rodríguez Halley describes him as a man “shy in his more closed, more familiar environment, but who also projects a public image of extroversion in certain environments.” Raúl Alejandro has been married more than once and has two daughters, according to close sources. Bodyguard Raúl Castro transferred the presidency of Cuba to Díaz-Canel in 2018 and formally withdrew from the front line of politics in 2021. But many analysts consider that he keeps his decision-making power intact in the political apparatus and in the armed forces. Political scientist Chaguaceda highlights that, in a closed system like Cuba’s, personal proximity to the figure who holds power can be a decisive factor. “The elite is concentrated in a small group of aging elders, military or civilian, who are part of the political sector,” he explains. “And there is a family component, which is Raúl Castro’s family.” Therefore, the influence of “Crab” would originate, more than from his own political trajectory, from the aforementioned proximity to his grandfather, according to experts and close sources. Unlike his father, a general who stood out for his notable academic and military trajectory, Raúl Alejandro Rodríguez Castro was not particularly brilliant in his studies or in his army career. In any case, his only known occupation is as a bodyguard for Raúl Castro himself. “The soldiers he grew up with were his reference, to the point that he himself decided he wanted to be his grandfather’s personal guard”, explains his cousin. Several sources position Raúl Guillermo as a senior official in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, with the rank of lieutenant colonel or colonel, always linked to Raúl Castro’s personal security. Reports mentioned by BBC Monitoring (the BBC’s monitoring service) indicate that his grandfather promoted him in 2016 to head of the General Directorate of Personal Security, a key unit of the Cuban security apparatus, responsible for protecting the country’s leaders. Since then, his presence at the former president’s side has become habitual. Photographs and videos published by the Cuban state press frequently show Raúl Alejandro alongside his grandfather in official events, meetings or trips abroad. He often appears dressed in an olive green uniform and sunglasses. On some occasions, he is seen a step behind Raúl Castro or leaning towards him, apparently transmitting information or guiding the former president during public events. This role places him in a unique position within the Cuban political system. “Raulito” controls physical access to the historic former leader and participates in the logistics, security and organization of his movements. In the same way as the former president’s other grandchildren, Raúl Alejandro also attracts attention due to information linking him to the privileged lifestyle of Cuba’s ruling elite, different from the economic difficulties faced by the majority of the island’s population. His social life in recent years was marked, according to close sources, by his proximity to Cuba’s sporting and cultural elite. “Like any Cuban, he was a baseball fanatic,” his cousin recalls. “But, of course, he didn’t go to baseball, like you and me, to sit and watch a game. He hung out with the best players.” “At his first wedding, there were all the artists from [banda] Charanga Habanera; There were also Alexander and the other musician from [grupo] Gente de Zona”, he says, in reference to two popular Cuban musical groups. The lack of information about Raúl Guillermo is a common fact when trying to analyze the internal workings of power in Cuba. “It has always been a very opaque system and what is known is little more than speculation”, says Armando Chaguaceda. Dialogue with the United States Raúl Guillermo Castro’s apparent participation in contacts with Washington also brought back a broader question: who really makes the decisions in Cuba? Sources mentioned by the American newspaper Miami Herald indicate that the Donald Trump government’s contacts were not limited to a single interlocutor, but rather to “several people around Raúl Castro”, including family members and senior military personnel. In this sense, Cuban President Díaz-Canel stated on Friday that he was at the forefront of the dialogues on Cuba’s part, alongside Raúl Castro and other senior officials from the Communist Party and the government. American delegation. American congressman Mario Díaz-Balart compared these dialogues with previous contacts between Washington and the Venezuelan government, before the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, on January 3. According to the same sources, these were not formal negotiations, but exchanges on possible economic and political changes on the island. In recent months, the American government has increased pressure on Cuba, which was already going through the biggest economic and energy crisis in the last three decades. of Venezuela, a traditional partner and supplier of the Cuban regime. And he threatened to impose import tariffs on countries that supply fuel to the island. At the same time, sectors of the Cuban diaspora in Miami, in the American state of Florida, expressed concerns about the possibility that Washington would allow the Castro family and its surroundings to remain in power. including the “Crab”, continue to control the country after a possible agreement.

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