Havana, Cuba —
During a state visit in 2016, Raul Castro was walking a red carpet to the government palace in Paris to be welcomed by French people when furious photographers began yelling at the Cuban president.
“Please! Bodyguard!” the photographers yelled at the Cuban officials who followed Castro and ruined the shot.
Then-French President Francois Hollande waved off a Cuban bodyguard tailing the two leaders, a moment that became fodder for the country’s late-night comedians. Such a public gaffe might have been career-defining for any other security official, except that the bodyguard in question was also Castro.
Raul Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, named after his grandfather, has been the bodyguard and gatekeeper for Cuba’s most powerful living figure for more than a decade, always standing just a few meters away when Raul Castro appears in public.
When the elder Castro, who at 94 years old is at least officially retired, would press the receiver or warn foreign reporters as they were ushered into the room mid-speech, he would sometimes whisper the names of Cuban officials into his grandfather’s ear.
Although he is always in the background, Rodríguez Castro’s name and family connections are never mentioned in Cuba’s tightly controlled state media.
At a time when tensions between the United States and Cuba are at an all-time high, Rodriguez Castro is emerging from his grandfather’s shadow to take on the surprising role of interlocutor with the Trump administration, which appears hell-bent on overturning his family’s tight grip on the communist-ruled island.
The transformation of Castro’s bodyguard into envoy is a development that most Cuban believers did not expect.
Rodríguez Castro, a colonel in Cuba’s Interior Ministry, was born with six fingers on one hand, which earned him the nickname El Cangrejo, or “The Crab.” During meetings with various world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US President Barack Obama, he was always glued to his grandfather’s side.
Rodríguez Castro has no official public role, but he does little to hide the privileges normally inaccessible to colonels in the Cuban military, at least those not part of the Castro family.
He is a regular at Havana’s high-end restaurants and has also been spotted driving a new SUV with its own security.
Leaked social media videos also show a young Castro frolicking aboard a private yacht and partying at expensive discos, luxuries out of reach for most Cubans.
“He wants positive change for the Cuban people,” Sandro Castro, another cousin of Rodriguez Castro, told CNN in a wide-ranging interview in March.
Sandro Castro said that although they are close in age and belong to the same family that seized power on the island nearly 70 years ago, he and his cousin did not grow up together and rarely see each other, but they are friendly.
“Laurito has his life and I have mine,” Sandro Castro said. He runs his own nightclub, supports a deal with the Trump administration to revive the island’s ailing economy, and is a controversial influencer.
“He is a military man and has always been my grandfather’s bodyguard,” Sandro Castro said of his cousin. “He has his grandfather’s trust. He put his life on the line for his grandfather. That’s why they have so much trust.”
Despite their seemingly opposite temperaments and professions, Sandro Castro said his cousin also shares his enthusiasm for flashy cars, jet-set living and Havana’s nightclub scene. They are said to be something only a privileged class of Cubans with money can enjoy.
“He’s cool,” Sandro Castro said of his cousin. “He’s not a communist either. He also wants to open things up.”
Depending on the progress of negotiations with the Trump administration, Rodriguez Castro could be poised to reap the benefits of injecting American capitalism into Cuba’s declining centrally run socialist economic system.
Rodríguez Castro is the son of Raul Castro’s daughter Deborah and Luis Alberto López-Calleja, the late general and head of GAESA, the military coalition that oversees a vast empire of hotels, marinas and other opaque businesses that make up much of the island’s economy.
During his 2019 trip to Mexico, López Calleja was listed by the Mexican government as a “key advisor” to Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel, who was traveling with him.
López-Calleja, who was already in charge of the military’s money-making enterprises and was married to the Castro family, became a member of parliament in 2021, a prerequisite for holding high government positions on the island, including the presidency.
However, López-Calleja suddenly died of a heart attack in 2022. Since his father’s death, Raul Guillermo Rodríguez Castro has apparently taken a greater interest in the island’s business and political world.
Diplomatic sources told CNN that he dined with European ambassadors to Cuba and requested private tours of the pavilions of Cuba’s economic partners during the annual week-long business fair in Havana.
“He’s become less of a party guy and more of a businessman,” a longtime foreign investor in Cuba told CNN. “Every time a new business, such as importing cars or selling luxury goods, is approved by the government, people suspect that he is involved,” the investor said.
According to a 2025 report in Panama’s La Prensa newspaper, Rodríguez Castro took at least 13 flights on Venezuelan government-owned private jets between Havana, Panama, and Caracas, back when the country was still a close trading partner.
CNN has asked the Cuban government for comment on Rodríguez Castro’s role and background.
Despite his high profile and close ties to his grandfather, news that Rodríguez Castro was secretly negotiating with the Trump administration to discuss a possible diplomatic deal, first reported by Axios in February, struck many Cuba observers as impossible.
Former Cuban officials at the time called the Trump administration’s report a “psychological operation” and questioned why Rodriguez Castro, with so little diplomatic training, would be given such an important mission.
Confirmation to the Cuban people came in March, when President Miguel Díaz-Canel appeared on television for the first time and acknowledged negotiations with the United States. His grandfather was not in attendance, and Rodriguez Castro was among a small audience of government officials.
“He had no reason to be there,” said one longtime Cuba observer, who asked not to be named to avoid controversy. “He’s not a politician or an international relations expert. He’s a bodyguard.”
Still, U.S. officials say Mr. Rodríguez Castro met in person at least twice with U.S. State Department officials, who tried to maintain his family’s influence without controlling it while persuading them of the need for fundamental changes on the island.
Rodriguez Castro is considered the Trump administration’s closest ally to Raul Castro. Mr. Castro is the only person who can order a dramatic change in relations with the United States and remove Cuban officials who try to sabotage the deal.
However, it is unclear what direction talks with Mr. Castro will take to fundamentally dismantle the revolution.
“U.S. policy has been organized around getting rid of Castro, and now it appears that the Trump administration is basically trying to empower Castro by negotiating with Raúl Castro’s grandson at the expense of Díaz-Canel,” Juan González, who served as the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere under the Biden administration, told CNN.
“I had never seen Mr. El Cangrejo as a major figure within the Cuban Communist Party, so I thought that was surprising. Anything he is trying to negotiate will be about the survival of the regime,” he said.
“It’s not clear that the current administration has a plan for Cuba,” Gonzalez said. “There’s a lot of improvisation going on.”
