Updated July 6, 2026, 9:40 a.m. ET
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HAVANA – The corded phone near Raúl Castro’s desk buzzed inside his wood-paneled office like it was 1984. This time, someone else answered.
Raúl Castro – Cuba’s former president, brother to Fidel – was, instead, waiting at home for news from his lunch date: his favorite grandson, his right-hand man.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, 42, the man Cubans call “El Cangrejo” – the Crab – is now the one in the seat of power in that very office. Tall and thickset, with piercing light-green eyes, a buzz cut, designer clothes and a deep, raspy voice that echoes his great-uncle Fidel’s, he was too busy at the moment to speak to his 95-year-old grandfather.
“I’ve never been interested in politics. It’s never been a calling of mine,” Rodríguez Castro said during an exclusive series of interviews with USA TODAY over the course of two days in June in Havana. “But if at some point the revolution needs me to step up, I will do it.” He stressed he would never sacrifice the principles of Cuba’s 1959 revolution or the nation’s sovereignty.
Rodríguez Castro is unknown to many outside Cuba. He holds no formal government office and rarely appears in Cuba’s state media. He had never before spoken to a U.S. media outlet. He is a back-channel operator who has undeniable status, authority and clout – much of it derived from his last name.
Now the younger Castro is the one in a position to negotiate for the future of his country. The former bodyguard to his grandfather wants to deal directly with President Donald Trump.
“I can negotiate with anyone designated by the U.S.,” Rodríguez Castro said. “If given the opportunity, claro que con Trump.” Of course, with Trump.
There’s no time to waste. Cuba faces a cratered economy, a humanitarian crisis and an oil blockade from the Trump administration. It wants to avoid being the next Venezuela as the United States levels sanctions and raises a military threat unseen between the countries since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Rodríguez Castro could be the bridge between both sides.
USA TODAY spoke to more than a dozen people who have had personal dealings with Rodríguez Castro. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because their exchanges were private or they are not authorized to speak on the record.
At the height of their power, Rodríguez Castro’s grandfather and great-uncle, Fidel, were rarely seen without their olive-green military uniforms. Rodríguez Castro wore light-blue skinny jeans, a tight, black Hugo Boss T-shirt and Hermes sneakers.
Sitting in his grandfather’s old office atop Havana’s Convention Center, home to Cuba’s parliament, Rodríguez Castro discussed his vision for the future of Cuba and why he believes he is the one to achieve it.
Raised by revolutionaries
Rodríguez Castro only recently emerged from his grandfather’s shadow, but he was groomed for leadership.
He is Raúl Castro’s eldest grandson, son of the late Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, the man who ran GAESA – the opaque company run by Cuba’s military that underpins swaths of the Cuban economy.
Rodríguez Castro grew up in the same building as his grandparents and moved in with them when he turned 18. He spent many of his formative years surrounded by senior regime officials, generals, security officers, intelligence agents and, of course, his all-powerful grandfather. They became his entire world.
“You know bodyguards and personal security agents? Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated by them. It’s all I ever wanted to be,” Rodríguez Castro said.
But now he has moved beyond boyhood notions of spy games.
Raúl Castro made sure that from the time his grandson was a teenager, he sat in on every important meeting on Cuban state affairs – including hours of heated discussions between Fidel and Raúl. It is for this reason that he developed a second moniker: Raulito − Little Raúl.
“He’s el nieto preferido,” said Frank Mora, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University. He is the favorite grandson.
“Raúl Castro trusted his father, and he’s the grandson he most liked,” Mora said.
Raúl Castro nicknamed his grandson “El Cangrejo” because he was born with six fingers on his right hand. The name stuck. He had three surgeries on that hand before age 8. As he spoke, he tucked a misshapen thumb under his four fingers.
Rodríguez Castro attended Cuba’s state school system and graduated from the University of Havana, where he majored in accounting and finance. He was not, according to the Miami Herald, a good student. (He disputes that assessment.)
He studied in a military school known as “Los Camilitos,” named after the late Cuban revolutionary hero Camilo Cienfuegos. He would eventually attain the rank of colonel in the interior ministry.
Most days he wakes around 5 a.m. For a few hours, he reads classified briefings from Cuba’s interior, foreign and military ministries. He keeps the documents in a leather Salvatore Ferragamo briefcase. He will discuss them with his grandfather later in the day, sometimes over lunch.
Rodríguez Castro said that he grew up in a loving family and that his grandparents helped forge his character. But, he said, they are first and foremost his compañeros – his comrades, using the communist term that emphasizes equality, solidarity and common purpose, the ideals the revolution were intended to stand for.
In public, Rodríguez Castro refers to his grandfather as “Minister,” the role he held longest as head of Cuba’s armed forces for almost 50 years. In private, when he worries about his grandfather tripping and falling, he is simply Abuelo – grandfather.
He said he has a “different understanding” of how his grandfather and great-uncle treated the Cuban people. When Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba from Fulgencio Batista, he built a country with free universal health care and education systems. He also imprisoned entire generations of Cubans, oversaw summary trials, denied them fundamental human rights, nationalized the economy and sent hundreds of thousands into exile.
Rodríguez Castro said he first read something negative about his family when he was 12. He dismissed it. “I knew these people. They were good people,” he insisted. “The men who did this Revolution were just – but they weren’t stupid.”
He spoke of the Cuban revolution and his grandparents with wistful affection, part historical account and part folklore. He speaks of his grandparents the way any doting Cuban grandson might in his idealized version of Cuba.
“My grandmother was incredibly sweet. She shaped the role women should have in this country,” Rodríguez Castro said of Vilma Espín, a socialite whose father was a Bacardi Rum executive. She fought alongside Fidel and Raúl Castro in the mountains during the revolution. Espín became an influential member of Cuba’s Communist party.
The Crab has children of his own. He has two daughters with his first wife, Sheyla Puentes, and another with his second wife, Daliene Gómez Tomás. His third wife, Cuban model Sheila Mariño, gave birth to their son in June.
“We knew what his name would be: Raúl for my grandfather and Alberto for my dad,” he said.
Rodríguez Castro’s hand unconsciously drifted to his throat as he talked about his family. He untucked a gold chain from under his T-shirt.
“I don’t know if you are a believer,” he said, revealing a gold medallion with the initials “FCR” and “RCR” embossed on either side: Fidel Castro Ruz and Raúl Castro Ruz.
“If there’s anything I believe in,” he said, “it is these two men.”
A communist in designer sneakers
Many aspects of the young Castro’s lifestyle do not sit easily with a communist leader-in-waiting.
Rodríguez Castro grew up extraordinarily privileged.
In a country that has endured near-constant deprivation for most of the past seven decades, he enjoys a life of private jets, luxury yachts and the freedom to travel, something most ordinary Cubans rarely get to do – even if he, too, is subject to the Cold War-era embargo.
He earned a reputation as a party boy in his 20s and 30s as he traveled the world as an attaché to Raúl Castro. He talked with glee about the round-the-clock vibrancy and bustle of New York City, where he attended Yankee games in premium seats close to the field. (Derek Jeter was his favorite player.) He admired Paris for its romantic flair and cuisine, and he imagines a Cuba where his countrymen could find foie gras on the shelves. He values Moscow for its opulence.
Fidel Castro famously wore two Rolexes at the same time and gifted them to valued military commanders. Rodríguez Castro wears a stainless-steel version on his left wrist. (Both men are left-handed.)
Rodríguez Castro made at least 23 private trips aboard a private jet to Panama between 2024 and late 2025, where he was spotted luxury-shopping. This is according to a joint investigation by Panamanian newspaper La Prensa, Venezuelan outlet Armando.Info, corruption watchdog Transparencia Venezuela en el Exilio, and Costa Rica-based investigative journalism unit Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística.
During one of those trips, he said he was accompanied by Cuban Brig. Gen. Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, who inherited the GAESA empire after Rodríguez López-Calleja – Rodríguez’s Castro father – died in 2022. The United States recently sanctioned her for GAESA involvement.
Rodríguez Castro, now in his 40s, did not dispute these trips happened. He said he was looking for investment opportunities for his country.
“It pains me that many people can’t live the way I do. It weighs on me how people struggle. And I’m working every day to change that situation,” he said.
GAESA has its tentacles across Cuba’s economy: hotels, real estate investments, construction companies, ports, currency exchanges, customs services and more. Its 2023 revenue reportedly exceeded Cuba’s entire state budget by more than three times, according to leaked financial records published by the Miami Herald.
Rodríguez Castro helps oversee GAESA, has a hand in its operations and acts as a liaison between the organization and his grandfather. Rodríguez Castro says the most accurate Spanish word for his GAESA role is apoyar – he supports it. He also said it represents a much smaller share of Cuba’s overall economy than is routinely reported, about 15%. He says it goes toward purchasing food, medicine and fuel. (USA TODAY could not independently verify either claim.)
On paper, he controls the security of Cuba’s leaders. Unofficially, he advises on investment opportunities, negotiations and policy decisions – any area leaders in official roles, such as president Miguel Díaz-Canel, deem necessary.
The Castro family has been linked, through GAESA chiefly, to a lucrative world of hotels, banks, retail monopolies, foreign-currency businesses, foreign private compounds and offshore accounts. Before Fidel Castro’s death at age 90, Forbes magazine estimated his personal wealth at roughly $900 million, which he vehemently denied.
Rodríguez Castro was adamant that he has no wealth of his own. His fashionable clothes, luxury foreign vehicles and expensive overseas trips are all paid for by wealthy friends and admirers, he claims. Few of his critics find that credible.
Rodríguez Castro also loves the gym. He is a fitness enthusiast and avid weightlifter who says he trains at least six times a week. He says he once worked out on a plane, at 30,000 feet, to the dismay of flight attendants.
“The Hegseth of Cuba,” one person familiar with Rodríguez Castro’s commitment to fitness called him. It was a reference to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who sometimes exercises alongside U.S. troops. Rodríguez Castro, the person said, projects a similar tough-guy image.
He also likes singing and dancing.
A 2017 video caught him dancing onstage with the popular reggaeton group Gente de Zona in Varadero, a resort town known for its powder-white beaches and its inaccessibility to most Cubans. Rodríguez Castro can be seen wearing a New York Yankees shirt, moving suggestively to driving percussive beats, punctuated by catchy, syncopated vocals.
The back of his shirt was embroidered with two words: “El Cangrejo.”
A bridge to U.S. negotiators
The Trump administration has been coy about who, if anyone, it sees as a credible Cuba interlocutor.
Rodríguez Castro believes he is that person.
He has growing direct and indirect lines to senior American officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio; well-connected American businessmen; and a multitude of White House hangers-on, such as Victor Mellor, a Republican congressional candidate in Rhode Island who twice traveled to Havana in June to meet Rodríguez Castro. (The State Department said it did not authorize Mellor’s trip.)
All are trying to shape the Trump administration’s Cuba policy.
Rodríguez Castro speaks with conviction when he discusses negotiating with the White House. He uses his hands vigorously to punctuate points and alternates between a gentle and booming voice. He said he is determined to not throw away the ideology his family fought for. After all it was his grandfather, he said, who chose him for this role.
“Historic heroes will always have a word,” he said in Havana.
Yet he doesn’t appear to covet political power, said one person who dined with Rodríguez Castro in Havana several times in recent months. Instead, the source said, Rodríguez Castro feels he might be the only one who can appease the Americans’ demands for change without giving up the ideals of the revolution.
“Raulito offers them more flexibility because he is a quasi-official. He is a military officer. But his role is much larger than it is on paper,” said Pablo Uchoa, an expert on security issues in Latin America at University College of London.
Rodríguez Castro spoke with Rubio for the first time in January, shortly after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a dramatic raid in Caracas. Thirty-two Cuban soldiers working security for Maduro were killed in the raid. Rodríguez Castro said he knew many of them and was shaken by their deaths.
He faced Rubio in St. Kitts a month later, followed by a discussion in April at Havana’s Convention Center with Jeremy Lewin, a State Department official who until recently was in charge of all U.S. foreign assistance – Rubio’s de facto Cuba envoy. Rodríguez Castro was also in the room when CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana in May.
The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on dozens of companies linked to the Cuban government, and senior regime officials and their families, from the president on down.
Rodríguez Castro, tellingly, has not been sanctioned.
That appears by design. In the wake of the U.S. military strike on Venezuela, the Trump administration bet that Rodríguez Castro could be the one to broker economic and political change, said Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan organization of Cuban-American leaders that advocates for reconciliation with Cuba. A former U.S. official confirmed the Americans have quietly been vetting Rodríguez Castro for months as a potential go-between.
Herrero argues that the United States chose to negotiate with Rodríguez Castro over Alejandro Castro Espín, Raúl Castro’s only son, who led Obama-era negotiations during a brief rapprochement Trump has since scaled back. This way, Herrero said, a new deal wouldn’t appear to be “Obama 2.0.”
“This administration has helped create Raulito,” Herrero said. “He’s been able to achieve consensus among the different bands within the Cuban state in favor of a market opening. But that’s not enough for those around Rubio who want to see political change, not just economic change.”
By contrast, no one from the Trump administration has directly engaged with Cuba’s president, Díaz-Canel – the first person without a Castro name to occupy that role. Rodríguez Castro insists he is in concert with Díaz-Canel, whom he affectionately calls “Miguelito” – Little Miguel – and they are on the same page.
Cuba is holding up its end by undertaking what it considers significant and historic reforms to its state-run economy, Rodríguez Castro said. On June 18, Cuba’s leaders unveiled a plan, not yet ratified by its parliament, with more than 170 sweeping measures that would privatize a vast swath of its socialist economy − reforms Rodríguez Castro used his clout to push through. The most obvious concession is compensating Cubans and Americans whose assets were confiscated during the revolution.
Rodríguez Castro also claims that despite what Rubio and the rest of the Trump administration say, Cuba is not a national security threat to the United States nor a state sponsor of terrorism. He also said the country is willing, under the right conditions, to release “people deemed political prisoners.” Prisoners Defenders, a Madrid-based legal-defense organization, puts the number of political prisoners in Cuba today at more than 1,200.
“The truth isn’t an absolute,” Rodríguez Castro said.
The U.S. State Department publicly described Cuba’s moves as window dressing.
Rodríguez Castro witnessed his grandfather sign the accord with the Obama administration. He believes this makes him uniquely qualified for the current moment.
Most important, Rodríguez Castro isn’t his grandfather.
In May, the U.S. Justice Department indicted Raúl Castro for a 1996 incident when Cuban military jets shot down two Miami-based civilian planes. Three U.S. citizens and one Cuban national were killed in the attack. Raúl Castro was Cuba’s armed forces minister at the time.
The man in Hermes sneakers took a different approach to diplomacy.
In mid-April, Rodríguez Castro sent a secret letter to Trump that resembled a formal diplomatic communication stamped with an official Cuban seal, according to two people close to the Trump administration, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
It was intended to be a back-channel missive. The letter outlined proposals for economic and investment cooperation, and it requested that the United States drop sanctions on Cuba. It cautioned that the Cuban government was ready to resist any U.S. military action.
The plan hit a wall when the letter was intercepted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent at Miami International Airport. The agent confiscated the letter, carried by Cuban businessman Roberto Carlos Chamizo, and sent him back to Havana. It is not clear whether Trump was ever made aware of its contents.
Rodríguez Castro and Chamizo, his friend, denied to USA TODAY that the letter was intended for Trump.
But it is one of many signs he is trying to drag Cuba into a fresh U.S.-Cuba relationship.
Proving himself capable
Meanwhile, Rodríguez Castro has shown himself a negotiator.
In mid-June he personally backed a fuel deal with Vanguard Energy, a Coral Gables, Florida-based firm that trades fuel in the Caribbean and Latin America, two people close to the lobbying effort confirmed.
The deal would not have satisfied Cuba’s spiraling energy needs. It did represent a lifeline.
The White House blocked the deal at the 11th hour over objections to using energy storage facilities owned by Cuba Oil Union, or CUPET, the country’s largest government-controlled oil company. Rubio sanctioned CUPET on June 11, the day the deal was announced.
But the episode underscored Rodríguez Castro’s ability to sign deals between the United States and Cuba. It also demonstrated that his influence is limited by the most senior U.S. decision-makers on Cuba, such as Rubio, who takes the general view that there is no such thing as a private sector in Cuba, according to person familiar with the matter.
In early June, Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee he hasn’t found a Cuban official who could lead a “transition” to a government pliant to U.S. interests similar to the role played by Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela, that nation’s U.S.-approved acting president.
“I really don’t believe this system is capable of reform, unless new people take over or a new mindset takes hold,” Rubio said in his testimony.
The Castros intend to pass down Cuba from one generation to the next, like a family ranch, according to one person familiar with the Trump administration’s views on Cuba.
Some Cuba watchers are skeptical Rodríguez Castro could assume a leading role in the official government. They argue Cuba’s system of overlapping institutions is designed to prioritize consensus over individual leadership. One senior official familiar with Cuba’s internal political dynamics agreed.
“He has no official position in their government. Cuban officials are very transparent on the people who represent the government,” said Illinois Rep. Jonathan Jackson, a progressive Democrat who visited Cuba in April to meet with its senior officials.
Jackson does not see Rodríguez Castro as a significant U.S.-Cuba power broker.
“Raulito is powerful. He has access. He’s someone the White House can talk to. (But) he can’t operate outside Cuba’s political framework,” said Uchoa, of University College London.
There is also the question of what happens to Rodríguez Castro’s authority when his grandfather dies.
Raúl Castro retained his power by his proximity to his brother, Fidel. History shows family successions, whether in North Korea or Syria, tend to happen through rigid authoritarian control, with the transfer of power underwritten by whoever controls the military.
Cuba’s top military official, Gen. Álvaro López Miera, 82, has been fiercely loyal to Raúl Castro, with whom he fought alongside as a teenager during the Cuban revolution. It’s not clear what López Miera thinks about his fellow revolutionary’s grandson.
Rodríguez Castro “is the avatar for Raúl Castro and holds a lot of power while his grandfather is still alive,” said María José Espinosa, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas.
That connection got Rodríguez Castro in the room. He won’t discuss details of his negotiations with Washington, but he is wise to the difficulties of the situation, he said, speaking from his grandfather’s office – an office that is now his own.
He was surrounded by beige pleather armchairs gathered around low tables adorned with silk flowers. A painting of silhouetted galloping horses hung behind him, an appropriate motif for a man who counts hunting and riding among his hobbies.
It was quiet inside the office, except for the steady hum of a window air conditioner. Beyond its walls, much of the building sat in darkness.
Lights had been switched off to conserve electricity amid fuel shortages that have gripped Cuba since the beginning of the year. It lent the vast Havana Convention Center an almost abandoned stillness. A political palace for one.
All eyes on the Crab
Rodríguez Castro entered through the back door of El Antojo restaurant in Old Havana several days later, flanked by bodyguards.
Again he wore light-blue skinny jeans, this time with a tight white Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt and matching designer sneakers.
A DJ played dub lounge music as Rodríguez Castro tucked into a leather sofa in El Antojo’s third-floor cigar room, a restaurant where the Cuban dish ropa vieja costs 4,200 pesos – about two-thirds of what most Cubans earn in a month. It’s where he recently met with businessman Mellor, the aspiring Rhode Island lawmaker.
“Sientate, mi corazon,” he told a waitress standing at attention, urging her to sit.
No cigars were smoked. But Rodríguez Castro held court for more than five hours, evoking Fidel Castro’s long, late-night meetings.
Outside, Old Havana’s dark streets stretched for miles. Cubans strolled along el Paseo del Prado promenade in the inky night, desperate to escape the stifling heat of their homes. They clustered around hotels, searching for a Wi-Fi signal for their smartphones.
El Floridita and Sloppy Joe’s, tourist destinations made famous by American novelist Ernest Hemingway, sat dark and shuttered.
Inside, Rodríguez Castro sipped an Aperol spritz, then moved on to a California red wine not on the menu. Fidel Castro taught him to drink wine, he said, as he munched on chicharrones – fried pork chunks – squeezed with lime. By the end of the night, Rodríguez Castro was singing a Nicky Jam song a cappella.
His vision for Cuba, he said, is “so much prosperity it’s hard to imagine.”
Cuba’s model will be “innately Cuban,” he said, even when it draws from China or Vietnam, two countries that evolved from Soviet-style economies and underwent successful, if not perfect, capitalist transformations.
“Soon,” he said, the people of Cuba “will find all the things they seek in other countries.” He did not elaborate.
As he left the restaurant, a stranger strolled up and gave Rodríguez Castro a hug.
“¡Mi sangre!” the man called out. My brother. My blood. “I know that with you in charge, the lights will return to Havana.”
It’s clear Rodríguez Castro is a major player in an unfolding drama with an outcome that has eluded every American president since 1959: a new dawn for Cuba.
Rodríguez Castro may or may not ascend to the very top of Cuba’s official power structure. He may not be able to make the deal both sides want. But in one sense, he is already in charge.
In meetings with senior Cuban officials, they defer to him. When he enters a hallway, people stand at attention. At a restaurant, his table is the only one occupied.
And when he walks down the street, Cubans stop what they’re doing and follow Rodríguez Castro with their eyes.