Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja (Cuba, 1960-2022). Major General of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Executive President of the Business Administration Group, S.A. (GAESA or GAE), regarded as a powerful military consortium of the armed forces that controls a significant portion of the most important sectors of the Cuban economy.
Among its most profitable groups is Gaviota, which manages the most productive hotels on the island, with revenues estimated to generate $700 million annually for GAESA. Other notable companies include Tecnotex and Tecnoimport—engaged in import and export, TRD Caribe—retail supermarkets that operate in foreign currency, the Unión de Construcciones Militares, the Inmobiliaria Almest, the company responsible for the Mariel Comprehensive Development Zone (Zdimsa), and a port services, customs, transportation, and wholesale company (Almacenes Universales). This list also includes Corporación Cimex, which owns retail stores, gas stations, a network of cafes, photography studios, shipping companies, real estate firms, and banks, among other interests in Cuba, as well as Habaguanex, a corporation that belonged to the Office of the Historian of Havana, now encompassing over 300 establishments, including restaurants, shops, markets, cafes, and 16 hotels and hostels totaling 546 rooms of various categories. For all these reasons, it has been stated that GAESA dominates 70% of the island's economy.
López-Calleja is the son of Major General Guillermo Rodríguez del Pozo, head of the Medical Services of the FAR and the National Civil Defense General Staff, a man close to Raúl Castro. A military man like his father, he frequented the Castro household and married Déborah Castro Espín, the eldest daughter of Raúl and Vilma Espín, with whom he had two children: Vilmita Rodríguez Castro and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as "El Cangrejo" for being born with six fingers on one hand. He serves as the Personal Security Chief for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, which often finds him accompanying his grandfather both inside and outside of Cuba.
As for Vilma Rodríguez Castro, she made headlines in 2019 when it was revealed that she owned a lavish mansion that she rented out through the AIRBNB platform in the Miramar neighborhood for $600 a night. This platform also confirmed that she owned other luxurious properties on the island for the same purpose and that she herself used the site to book similar accommodations in places like Geneva, Paris, and New York.
In 2016, the name López-Calleja appeared on the list of the most corrupt men in the world compiled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). According to statements made in 2018 by U.S. diplomat Roger Noriega, who served as ambassador to the Organization of American States and as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during George W. Bush's administration, Cuban military personnel under López-Calleja's command would be directly involved in cocaine trafficking from the Venezuelan port of La Guaira to Europe and West Africa.
Donald Trump, in his shift in policy toward Cuba, imposed a ban on U.S. companies doing business with Cuban companies owned or controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), using GAESA as a starting point due to its role in enriching the Cuban military, whom Trump holds responsible for what he calls "the repression and human rights violations in Cuba."
López-Calleja, a low-profile man, elusive before cameras and the press, and rarely seen in public, appeared as part of the delegations led by the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel that traveled to Russia to meet with Putin, and to New York to attend the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations. This was interpreted as evidence that the FAR intends to seize absolute power on the island. Likewise, the newly appointed Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz comes from a long career in the tourism sector, where he served as the first vice president of the Gaviota Group, further confirming Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja as the main mastermind and the central figure where the primary pathways of the Cuban economy begin and end.
On September 30, 2020, the United States government sanctioned López-Calleja by including him on the list of blocked persons by the Department of the Treasury (SDN), which entails the freezing of his assets under U.S. jurisdiction and a visa ban for traveling to the United States.
He passed away in Havana on July 1, 2022, due to a cardiac arrest.
