HAVANA.- He is not and has never been a deputy. He has never held any important position other than that of Head of his grandfather’s Personal Security Directorate. He does not have a relevant career as a “political cadre” of the Communist Party. Or, rather, he has no career at all, and he never held positions either in the University Student Federation or in the Union of Young Communists, during his time in the “Camilitos” (military pre-university) and in the different military academies where he did his training, although without merit for his intellect. However, today he is Lieutenant Colonel Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro is, along with his uncle, Colonel Alejandro Castro Espínthe heart of that dilapidated and anachronistic artifact that is the Castro regime.
The nonagenarian Raúl Castro is also one, although only because he publicly continues in his role as Chief of Chiefs and reserves himself for big decisions, but in reality years ago he placed the whip in the hands of his most important heirs.
At first, he chose the duo formed by the current coordinator of the National Defense and Security Council (an autonomous body to which all government institutions, civil and military, are subordinated without exception, created especially to concentrate in one Castro all power over the intelligence and counterintelligence apparatus) and the Major General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja —father of Raúl Guillermo—, personally trained by the skilled Julio Casas Regueiro to preside over the Business Administration Group of the Armed Forces (GAESA) that he himself conceived. In this way, they gave it control of much more than 90 percent of the Cuban economy, while the conglomerate of military companies, as has been revealed over time, extends beyond the limits of the Island, in a complex network of accounts abroad, assets, off-shore and figureheads.
But the sudden death of López-Calleja in July 2022 changed many more things than those revealed so far, and one of them, possibly the most important, was that Raúl Guillermo, remaining in the shadows, took his father’s place in business, even without possessing any talent for them, although he did have the “real” and cold blood, brute force, discretion and enough information – provided by his uncle – to keep the large and small military leaders who manage them under control. the hundred divisions that make up GAESA, inside and outside Cuba.
This duo of heirs, as the absolute top in the power pyramid and as examples of a typical mafia scheme, is not accountable to anyone and acts at will above laws, provisions, ideologies and “ethical principles.” So holding a public office would rather be a straitjacket that they are not willing to wear, and therefore they have given it up, without any type of resistance or jealousy, to those showcase fools who still tear their clothes while swearing that there are no negotiations with the US government, and in reality they have no reason to know, it is not their business, and we already discovered not long ago, with the case of Alejandro Gilhow oblivious they go around, making fools of themselves over and over again.
Now everything indicates, according to press reportsthat Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro as their interlocutor, and that they have chosen him because they have very accurately identified that, even without discursive skills but with the necessary practical sense to put aside ideological passions and fanaticisms, he is the main figure of Castroism, with total decision-making power, without responding to a chain of command and without obligations or commitments with allies, or diplomatic protocols. Which saves them time.
“The Crab,” as Raúl Castro’s favorite grandson is called in his family, is not a man of thought, as his classmates and friends remember him, who also describe him as obsessed with physical exercise and his appearance, to the point of spending hours in the gym and in front of the mirror, and all because—one of them says—during his years in primary or secondary school a certain girl he was attracted to would have made fun of his thinness.
Then came military studies as the only remedy for the teenager’s lack of vocation, and when his mother Déborah Castro, Raúl’s eldest daughter, became convinced that the boy, instead of inheriting the intelligence of his father Luis Alberto—always graduated with honors in both Cuba and the Soviet Union—carried her few lights in his genes, always passing the subjects by the skin of his teeth or because she was dad’s little daughter. Just as it happened with her sister Mariela Castro at the Pedagogical Institute, where several times she was in danger of being failed due to her poor academic performance; or with his mother, Vilma Espín, and her anthology “mistakes.”
Unlike his sister Vilma Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Guillermo is not on social networks, but that does not prevent us from knowing through the pages of his friends, especially those in show business and those who today They even have businesses in the United States.who shares with his sister his “hobby” for real estate businesses, for renting luxury mansions. And with his cousins he shares the passion of opening bars and restaurants throughout the Island, of enjoying and making money with the pleasures of a nightlife that every day, between blackouts and without tourism, turns into death, boredom, bankruptcy. So no one but him, and those of his surname, are interested in the best outcome in a negotiation that urgently returns them to the best period of their business, or perhaps to a better one.
Nor are his wife Daliene Gómez Tomás, nor his children with her and his previous marriages and courtships, on social networks (although some of the latter do not have his last name). Nothing of risk transcends. Nothing that could reveal the slightest detail about his “deep” life. Nothing beyond the photos that we all know and that he and his uncle Alejandro have possibly leaked for all intents and purposes, like winks from a distance. But once those slips were overcome, the rest would be indiscretions that the Crab could not forgive himself for, although no one would have the courage or the power to punish him for them.
We recently learned of the at least 25 trips he took to Panama, the center of business operations outside Cuba, by private jet and with a diplomatic passport. These trips were made in Venezuelan aircraft or registered in aeronautical havens such as San Marino, to avoid being monitored.
On one of those flights, exactly on May 1, 2024, the Crab traveled accompanied by Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, brigadier general, deputy and current president of GAESA.
On the other hand, little has emerged about his recent visits to Mexico, to Venezuela before the fall of Nicolás Maduro; nor of the characters of dubious honesty who accompanied him. Raúl Guillermo is also not responsible for the decisions he may have made about the companies off-shore of his late father, or those of Guillermo Faustino Rodríguez López-Callejabrother of that one, which are more than any other Cuban on the Island can own.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro is not what we would call a smart guy, he is more of a cold-blooded brute. Let’s remember when a young woman from Holguín accused him in April 2022 of running over her with his car, without consequences or repercussions, without justice being done yet. It is what many would avoid putting on a negotiation table for fear that they will knock it down in an outburst, or that they will be distracted by their own image if someone placed a mirror in front of them; but he is also definitely the guy who, unlike the ignored Miguel Díaz-Canel, with a simple “yes” or “no” answer could change the course of events in Cuba, without needing to consult anyone, perhaps just his grandfather.
