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The Cuban political analyst José Manuel González Rubines published this Friday in the Spanish newspaper El Debate a chronicle about the figure of "El Cangrejo" in which he concludes that Cuba is not a deficient State, but rather a "personalist mafia," and that no serious investor or businessman can operate securely in an environment where strategic decisions are made by someone without an official position or known preparation.
The text directly responds to the profile published on July 6 by USA Today about Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as El Cangrejo, grandson of Raúl Castro and a colonel in the Ministry of the Interior responsible for the personal security of his nonagenarian grandfather, who presented himself to the U.S. press as a potential interlocutor with Washington.
González Rubines, co-director of the think tank Cuba x Cuba and a master's graduate in Democracy and Good Governance from the University of Salamanca, points out that the interview was conceived as a media diplomacy exercise to position Rodríguez Castro in the minds of the White House as a viable Cuban interlocutor, using his grandfather's old office at the Palace of Conventions in Havana as the setting.
The contrast between the character's lifestyle and the reality of the Cuban people is striking: a Salvatore Ferragamo portfolio for storing classified reports, a steel Rolex on the wrist, Hermès sneakers, and Hugo Boss t-shirts, while millions of Cubans survive on salaries ranging from ten to fifteen dollars a month and endure power outages lasting more than 30 consecutive hours.
The phrase that González Rubines finds most revealing about the character is the one Rodríguez Castro said to the journalists from USA Today: "It hurts me a lot that people cannot live like I do, but I get up every day to change that situation." The analyst describes it as "the disdain of an elite condensed in false empathy, the clumsiness of one who confesses privilege in the very gesture meant to conceal it."
The Communist Party apparatus itself confirmed the role of the individual. The official Elier Ramírez Cañedo publicly acknowledged on July 9 that Rodríguez Castro, Fidel's great-nephew, acts as the official interlocutor of the regime with Washington, "by decision of the highest leadership of the country," which reaffirms the central thesis of the analyst: real power in Cuba does not reside with Miguel Díaz-Canel but rather within the family circle of Raúl Castro.
Rodríguez Castro does not hold any position in the government or in the Communist Party, but he claims to have promoted the package of 176 economic reforms approved on June 19 by the National Assembly, engage in discussions with American representatives, and support fuel supply agreements with private companies in Coral Gables. "Cuba is not a failing state, but a personalist mafia," concludes González Rubines.
In April, Rodríguez Castro attempted to send a secret letter to Donald Trump through an allied businessman, bypassing Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The letter was intercepted at a border checkpoint, and the messenger was deported, an incident that the analyst cites as a reflection of the informality and unpredictability of the Cuban power structure.
Other voices joined the debate. The historian Alina Bárbara López Hernández, under house arrest since June 2024, warned in an analysis published this Friday that the real objective of the media operation is not negotiation with the United States, but rather "the legitimization before Washington of an inexperienced offspring of the group in power... so that when the historic generation disappears in a short time, the system of political exclusion they created continues unchanged."
The academic Julio César González Pagés also expressed himself on social media, pointing out that Rodríguez Castro summarizes his devotion to the revolution with a gold chain featuring the initials of his "idols," and that "the misery and desolation experienced by the ordinary Cuban people serve as the backdrop for many creative speeches that speak of homeland, nation, and nationalism."
González Rubines concludes his analysis with an image that encapsulates the state of the regime: El Cangrejo's office in the Palacio de Convenciones is dark due to a lack of electricity, an institutional building transformed into the private office of someone whose only merit is his surname. "The crownless monarchy of the Castros is handing over Cuba, which they consider their personal estate, to a bodyguard with a Ferragamo briefcase and a Rolex. Who could trust an investment in such an insecure, informal, and unpredictable environment?"
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