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 Administrative 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 and is estimated to generate $700 million annually for GAESA. Other notable entities include Tecnotex and Tecnoimport – involved in import and export, TRD Caribe – retail supermarkets selling in foreign currency, the Unión de Construcciones Militares, the Inmobiliaria Almest, the company responsible for the Mariel Special Development Zone (Zdimsa), and a company providing port, customs, transport, and wholesale services (Almacenes Universales). Also on this list is the Cimex Corporation, which operates retail stores, gas stations, a network of cafeterias, photography studios, shipping companies, real estate, and banks, among other interests. Additionally, there's Habaguanex, a corporation that belonged to the Office of the Historian of Havana, which currently includes over 300 establishments, including restaurants, stores, markets, cafeterias, and 16 hotels and hostels with a total of 546 rooms across various categories. Because of all this, 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 Staff, a close associate of Raúl Castro. A military man like his father, he frequented the Castro household and married Déborah Castro Espín, the firstborn of Raúl and Vilma Espín, with whom he had two children: Vilmita Rodríguez Castro and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as “El Cangrejo” for having been born with six fingers on one hand. He is the personal security chief of the former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, which often sees him accompanying his grandfather both inside and outside Cuba.
As for Vilma Rodríguez Castro, she made headlines in 2019 when the lavish mansion she owned was revealed, which she was renting out through the AIRBNB platform in the Miramar neighborhood for $600 a night. Thanks to this platform, it was also confirmed that she owned other luxurious properties on the island that she used for the same purpose, and that she herself was a user of this website, booking accommodations of a similar caliber in places like Geneva, Paris, and New York.
In 2016, López-Calleja's name appeared on the list of the world's most corrupt men 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 were allegedly directly involved in the trafficking of cocaine from the Venezuelan port of La Guaira to Europe and West Africa.
Donald Trump, in his shift in policy towards Cuba, imposed a ban on U.S. companies from 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, which Trump holds accountable for what he describes as "the repression and human rights violations in Cuba."
López-Calleja, a man of low profile, elusive in front of cameras and the press and rarely making public appearances, was seen 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 aims to gain absolute control of the island. Similarly, the newly appointed Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz comes from a long background in the tourism sector, where he served as the First Vice President of the Gaviota Group, further reinforcing Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja as the main mastermind and the axis upon which the primary avenues 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 prohibition on visas to travel to the United States.
He passed away in Havana on July 1, 2022, due to a cardiorespiratory arrest.
