Havana, Cuba
Raúl Castro was being feted by the French, strolling up a crimson carpet to a authorities palace in Paris throughout a state go to in 2016 when irate photographers started to yell in the course of the then-Cuban president.
“Please! Bodyguard!” the photographers shouted at the Cuban official who was on Castro’s heels and spoiling their shot.
Then-French President François Hollande waved away the Cuban bodyguard trailing the two leaders and the second turned fodder for the nation’s late-night comedians. Such a public gaffe might need been a career-ender for another safety official – besides the bodyguard in query was additionally a Castro.
Named for his grandfather, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro has for greater than a decade acted as half bodyguard, half gatekeeper to Cuba’s strongest residing determine, at all times simply ft away when Raúl Castro seems in public.
He would whisper the names of Cuban officers into his grandfather’s ear when the elder Castro, who’s 94 and is now at the very least formally retired, pressed the flesh in receiving strains, and has alerted him in the center of a speech when the international press has been ushered into the room.
While he’s at all times in the background, Rodríguez Castro’s identify and household connection are by no means talked about in Cuba’s tightly managed state-run press.
At a second of maximum tension between the US and Cuba, Rodríguez Castro is rising from his grandfather’s shadow to tackle a shocking function as an interlocutor with the Trump administration that appears hellbent on upending his household’s tight management over the communist-run island.
The Castro bodyguard turned emissary is a twist that few who observe Cuba noticed coming.
A colonel in Cuba’s Interior Ministry, Rodríguez Castro was born with a sixth finger on one hand, which earned him the moniker El Cangrejo or “the Crab.” During conferences with world leaders as diversified as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or former US President Barack Obama, he invariably stayed glued to his grandfather’s aspect.
While Rodríguez Castro doesn’t have an official public function, he does little to cover the perks that may often be far past the attain of a colonel in the Cuban army, at the very least one who will not be a part of the Castro household.
He is a fixture in a few of Havana’s fanciest eating places and has been seen driving in a brand new SUV with his personal safety element.
Leaked social media movies additionally present the youthful Castro frolicking aboard personal yachts and partying in costly discotheques, unattainable luxuries for most Cubans.
“He wants positive changes for Cubans,” Rodríguez Castro’s second-cousin Sandro Castro informed NCS throughout a wide-ranging interview in March.
While shut in age and each belonging to the similar household that seized energy on the island almost 70 years in the past, Sandro Castro mentioned he and his cousin didn’t develop up collectively and barely see each other however are pleasant.
“Raulito has his life and I have mine,” mentioned Sandro Castro, who runs his personal nightclub and is a controversy-seeking influencer in favor of a deal with the Trump administration to revive the island’s flatlining economic system.
“He is a military man, he has always been his grandfather’s bodyguard,” Sandro Castro mentioned of his cousin. “He has his grandfather’s confidence. He has risked his life for him. That’s why they have given so much trust.”
Despite their seemingly reverse temperaments and vocations, Sandro Castro mentioned his cousin shares his enthusiasm for flashy vehicles, the jet set life and the nightclub scene in Havana – solely loved by a privileged class of Cubans with {dollars} to spend.
“He’s cool,” mentioned Sandro Castro of his cousin. “He is not a communist, either. He wants things to open up, too.”
Depending on how negotiations advance with the Trump administration, Rodríguez Castro could possibly be poised to reap the advantages of an injection of US capitalism in Cuba’s flagging, centrally run socialist financial system.
Rodríguez Castro is the son of Raúl Castro’s daughter Deborah and Luis Alberto López-Calleja, the late common and head of GAESA, the army consortium that oversees a sprawling empire of inns, marinas and different opaque companies that embody the lion’s share of the island’s economic system.
On a visit to Mexico in 2019, López-Calleja was listed by the Mexican authorities as “the principal adviser” to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel whom he was accompanying.
Already answerable for the army’s moneymaking enterprises and married into the Castro household, López-Calleja turned a member of the National Assembly in 2021, a prerequisite to increased authorities positions on the island, together with the presidency.
But López-Calleja handed away unexpectedly in 2022 from a coronary heart assault. Following his father’s dying, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro has apparently taken a higher curiosity in the worlds of enterprise and politics on the island.
He has dined with European ambassadors stationed in Cuba and requested personal excursions of the pavilions of Cuba’s financial companions throughout Havana’s yearly week-long enterprise commerce present, a diplomatic supply informed NCS.
“He’s become more of a business guy, less of a party guy,” one long-time international investor in Cuba informed NCS. “Every time there’s a new venture allowed by the government to say import cars or sell high end goods, people wonder if he’s involved,” the investor mentioned.
According to a 2025 report from Panama’s La Prensa newspaper, Rodríguez Castro has taken at the very least 13 flights on personal jets belonging to the Venezuelan authorities that shuttled him between Havana, Panama and Caracas when Venezuela was nonetheless an in depth buying and selling accomplice.
NCS has reached out the Cuban authorities for remark about Rodríguez Castro’s function and background.
Despite his excessive profile and shut connection to his grandfather, the information first reported by Axios in February that Rodríguez Castro had been secretly negotiating with the Trump administration to debate a doable diplomatic deal struck many Cuba observers as unbelievable.
A former Cuban official at the time referred to as the report Trump administration “psy-ops” and doubted that with so little diplomatic coaching, Rodríguez Castro can be entrusted with such an vital mission.
Confirmation for the Cuban public got here in March, when President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on TV to acknowledge for the first time the negotiations with the US. There in the small viewers of high officers — with out his grandfather in attendance — was Rodríguez Castro.
“He had no reason to be there,” mentioned one longtime Cuba observer who didn’t need to be quoted by identify to keep away from repercussions. “He is not a politician, nor an expert in international relations; he is a bodyguard.”
All the similar, Rodríguez Castro has met at the very least twice in particular person with US State Department officers who’ve tried to persuade him of the want for basic modifications on the island whereas nonetheless retaining his household’s affect if not management, in accordance with US officers.
Rodríguez Castro is seen by the Trump administration as the closest particular person to Raúl Castro, who’s the solely determine on the island capable of mandate a dramatic shift in relations with the US and dismiss any Cuban officers making an attempt to impede a deal.
But it’s unclear the place talks with a Castro to essentially dismantle their revolution will lead.
“US policy has organized itself around the removal of the Castros, but it seems now that the Trump administration is basically empowering the Castros by negotiating with Raúl Castro’s grandson at the expense of Díaz Canel,” Juan Gonzalez, who was the senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council beneath the Biden administration, informed NCS.
“We never saw El Cangrejo as a major player inside of the Cuban Communist Party,” he mentioned, “So I did find it surprising. Anything that he is going to negotiate is going to include the regime’s survival.”
“It’s not clear this administration has a plan for Cuba,” Gonzalez mentioned. “There is a lot of improvisation going on.”