Without a consensus leader in exile and without clear opposition figures inside the country, the figure of Raulito, Raúl Castro’s favorite grandson, popularly known as ‘the crab’, has been gaining influence in Cuba to lead the transformation of the communist regime under pressure from the United States since he was accepted by Washington as an interlocutor in the talks that began in May.
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A mysterious figure with a little-publicized background, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, 42 years old and a colonel in the Ministry of the Interior, displays an informal style and wardrobe of major international brands like Hugo Boss or Hermès, indulgences that fuel hopes in the United States that he might be more inclined to admit capitalist reforms in Cuba.
The favorite grandson began to be seen in public when he served as Raúl Castro’s bodyguard, a role he still fulfills. He accompanied his grandfather on all official trips and meetings when he was president (2006-18), always so close to him that it sometimes caused protocol problems. Since 2015, he has held the nebulous position of head of the General Directorate of Personal Security, and some sectors claim that this includes being responsible for Cuba’s secret service. He has a profile similar to Vladimir Putin when he was a KGB officer, with little formal education — it is known he studied at the Los Camilitos military school — but unlimited access to confidential information. Additionally, due to his origin, he enjoys influence throughout the island and leads a life of privilege. If Raúl Castro is said to be the shadow power in Cuba, the crab is the shadow of that power.
Raulito is the key figure in the secret talks between the United States and the communist regime, which according to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel this week, are stalled. The crab, who has already met with U.S. Secretary Marco Rubio and the CIA director, has positioned himself to continue negotiating, even directly with President Trump, as he stated in an interview with USA Today.
In that interview, he presented himself as a possible future leader of the island. He received journalists in what years ago was Raúl Castro’s presidential office, in the National Assembly building, and answered questions under a poster-sized photo of a fraternal greeting between his grandfather and the late leader Fidel Castro.
Possible successor
Raulito displays a life of luxury that, for the United States, would make him more sensitive to the regime’s openness on the island
He did not hide from USA Today his fondness for luxury, such as wearing a Rolex watch. “It pains me that Cubans cannot live as I do,” he justified to the American newspaper and said he has “a vision of prosperity for Cuba that is hard to imagine.”
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro was born with six fingers on one hand, hence the nickname ‘the crab’, although after undergoing several surgeries, only a scar remains from that physical defect. His parents were Déborah Castro, Raúl Castro’s eldest daughter, and General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, who helped create and ended up presiding until his death in 2022 over the business conglomerate Gaesa, which controls most of the island’s economy and has become one of the main targets of U.S. sanctions.
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Although he is known to be shy and family-oriented, ‘the crab’ frequents Havana’s nightlife, always surrounded by Cuba’s musical and sports elite. Extreme sports and baseball are his passions, and he enjoys traveling by private jet, especially to Panama.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro’s main card is that he is not on the U.S. blacklist. Since May, Washington has applied nine rounds of sanctions on Cuba and has included 31 individuals and 49 companies. However, this summer the New York Times revealed that a detainee from the Cuban mafia in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo accused Rodríguez Castro of being involved in that organization.
Unpopular
Analyst Sebastián Arcos believes that no one from the Cuban ‘royal family’ can be the leader of the transition
His disadvantages are doubts about his capacity and lack of experience and his origin. Sebastián Arcos, acting director of the Cuba Research Center at the University of Florida, argues that Rodríguez Castro “is unacceptable as a leader of a transition for the internal opposition in Cuba or the external opposition in Miami. Because he is a member of the ‘royal family,’ as Cubans call the Cuban oligarchy. No one bearing the Castro surname or indirectly related to the family can be.”
For Arcos, son and nephew of revolutionaries who fought for democracy in Cuba and ended up as dissidents, the role of Raúl Castro’s favorite grandson is already over since talks with the United States have derailed “and now we are at an impasse because Cuba did not want to accept the conditions of the United States.”
Sebastián Arcos
“With Trump it is impossible to predict what will happen in Cuba
Sebastián Arcos does not see the conditions for a democratic transition in Cuba, as happened in Spain, Brazil, Chile, or Eastern Europe “because of the intolerance of this regime, determined not to relinquish power at the cost of the people’s welfare and even the demographic future of the Cuban nation.”
Arcos dismisses the announced economic reforms, which he calls “sugar water,” a very Cuban expression, and does not rule out that Havana manages to resist. “I find it difficult to see how it can survive the current situation, but they have a long record of surviving difficult situations, although this is undoubtedly the most difficult of all.”
Ernesto Hernández Nozaragay, a professor at the University of Sinaloa and an expert on the island, defines the Cuban regime’s attempt at openness as “a perestroika without glasnost,” an attempt to open the economy while leaving politics intact, without giving up the single party, media control, or authorizing the opposition.
Carlos Rodríguez Arechavaleta, a researcher at the Ibero-American University of Mexico City specializing in Cuban history, outlines five possible future scenarios, from reinforced authoritarian continuity to total regime collapse, which he considers most likely. And in a recent academic article, he speaks of “tactical dialogue” in which Cuba wants to address technical issues and avoid structural reforms.
According to Arcos, son of dissidents, “everything is possible because President Trump has a very peculiar, very transactional way of conducting foreign policy.”
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