Cuban professor dismantles Sandro Castro's speech and reveals what it shows about the crisis in Cuba

The university professor and luso-Cuban citizen Rodolfo Bendoyro intervened yesterday in CNN Portugal to analyze the controversial interview that Sandro Castro, the grandson of Fidel Castro, gave to CNN International on March 30, and concluded that his statements reveal the failure of the Cuban regime in three simultaneous dimensions: ideological, moral, and political.

The Portuguese network titled Bendoyro's intervention with a phrase that summarizes his central thesis: "Communism has been broken in Cuba for decades, and it is significant that Fidel Castro's grandson is saying this."

Bendoyro, who regularly appears in Portuguese media as a commentator on the situation in Cuba, structured his analysis based on Sandro Castro's own words, turning that interview into evidence of a systemic collapse.

"His statements reveal the failure of the Cuban regime in three dimensions: ideological, moral, and political," wrote the professor on his Facebook account after the intervention.

In the ideological realm, Bendoyro pointed out that "even Fidel's own grandson explicitly acknowledges that Cubans do not want communism," referring to Sandro Castro's statement that "the majority of Cubans want capitalism, not communism".

In moral terms, the analysis directly points to the gap between discourse and reality. The CNN interview was recorded in Sandro's apartment in the Havana neighborhood of Kohly —historically reserved for military personnel and intelligence agents— during a power outage, while the grandson of the regime's founder was using his own generator, serving cold beers, and wearing designer sunglasses.

This contrast is even more striking when considering that Sandro Castro admitted in the same interview that his bar in Vedado cost him 50,000 dollars, in a country where the average monthly salary is around twenty dollars.

Bendoyro articulated it precisely: the interview "exposes the privileged life of an elite connected to the regime, while the working people live in misery."

In the political realm, the professor emphasized that Sandro himself referred to President Miguel Díaz-Canel as incompetent. "Nor is he doing a good job," said Fidel Castro's grandson, expressing sympathy for Donald Trump.

For Bendoyro, the symbolic weight of all this is hard to ignore: "It is deeply revealing that even a member of the Castro family confirms, through their words and actions, the failure of a system that has oppressed Cuba for decades."

Bendoyro's intervention on CNN Portugal comes at a time of heightened tension on the island, characterized by power outages of over twenty hours a day in some provinces and increasing pressure from the Trump administration.

The professor had also appeared previously on the same broadcaster days earlier to discuss the Cuban government's announcement of the , warning that there were no indications that any political prisoners would be among those released, and sharing a call from Amnesty International Portugal.

Organizations such as Prisoners Defenders estimated 1,214 political prisoners in Cuba as of February 2026, a figure that the regime has neither acknowledged nor addressed in any of its recent gestures.