If the Castro family is the island’s “royalty,” as some Cubans call it, Sandro Castro appears to have applied for the role of court jester.
In a country where regular access to the internet is still considered a luxury, Cuban nightclub owner Sandro Castro (grandson of late leader Fidel Castro) has amassed more than 150,000 Instagram followers with outrageous and often bizarre antics, such as auditioning for the inevitable reality show about the profligate heir to a revolutionary dynasty.
Think “One Hundred Years of Solitude” meets “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
Unlike his other relatives, who are often very private and secretive, Sandro openly pursues fame and notoriety, even daring to undermine the island’s communist-run government.
But in an exclusive late-night interview during one of the island’s frequent power outages, the 33-year-old told CNN he was misunderstood.
“I’m making a video about a tense and sad situation,” Castro said, referring to the growing tensions between the island and the Trump administration that are further hastening Cuba’s economic collapse.
“At least I try to make people happy,” Castro said. “To get a smile from them. I would never make fun of someone who is suffering as well.
While Castro’s posts occasionally criticize the communist apparatchiks who succeeded his grandfather, who died in 2016, and his great-uncle, Raúl, who stepped down as president in 2018, they offer a rare glimpse into a privileged life most Cubans cannot imagine.
A recent Instagram video showed an actor wearing a bad wig pretending to be Donald Trump arriving at Castro’s doorstep and trying to buy Cuba from him.
“We can do business because you are a showman and a businessman like me,” the fake Trump says to the real Castro.
“What do you want to buy!?” Castro answered. “calm down!”
In a country that has warned its people that it needs to prepare for war, mocking President Trump’s threat to take over Cuba and the country’s worsening economic crisis would seem tone-deaf, if not dangerous.
It’s hard to imagine anyone not named Castro pulling off a similar stunt.
But Sandro Castro said he, like many other Cubans, is fed up with the direction the country is heading.
“It’s very difficult,” Castro said of the worsening crisis, which has seen some Cubans protest against the government and some search for food in trash cans.
“You’re suffering from a thousand problems. In a day, you might be out of electricity, you might be out of water, you’re not getting your goods. It’s really hard, it’s really hard,” Castro told me as his manager handed him another cold beer.
Although it was night, he wore designer sunglasses during the interview in his apartment in Havana’s remote Cori district, home to many members of the Cuban military and intelligence services.
The debate over how much Mr. Castro, who drinks ice-cold Cuban crystal beer and powers his modern-looking bachelor pad with an EcoFlow battery generator during an island-wide energy crisis, is really suffering will only deepen the debate over the scion of perhaps Cuba’s most famous family. Mr Castro insists he is not “Dubai’s rich man” and claims his family does not own a mansion or yacht and cannot even fill up his car with petrol. But in a country where the average monthly salary is less than $20, Mr. Castro appears to be doing more than enough for himself. Even as Cuba’s economy collapses, Castro and his cronies never stop partying on social media.
He is probably the most unusual person in Cuba. He is the man who unites two political extremes, who have been fighting over the future of the country for nearly 70 years, in a shared disdain.
To Cuban exiles who fled the 1959 revolution, he is a symbol of class hypocrisy, one of the descendants of communist leaders who for decades outlawed private industry and advocated austerity, even as they themselves reap the fruits of capitalism.
To ardent supporters of the Cuban revolution, he is a traitor to the proletariat, exploiting his revolutionary pedigree for clicks and likes.
“He’s trading on the ‘hate me’ feeling,” said Ted Henken, a sociology and anthropology professor at New York’s Baruch College who studies the spread of the Internet in Cuba. “The Kardashians, Paris Hilton and him all capitalize on this envy and ‘look at my amazing lifestyle’.”
“You can’t look away,” he said. “That anger gets likes and it gets followers.”
Castro denies that he is a billionaire and denies that his family ties could protect him or make his life easier than other Cubans. The nightclub on Havana’s main street cost “only” $50,000, he said. This amount is more than most Cubans could imagine.
“What little I have is because of my efforts and sacrifices,” he said.
Does being Castro help in Cuba? “My name is my name. Logically I’m proud of my name. But I don’t understand this help you’re talking about. I’m just another citizen,” he said.
During the interview, Castro wondered aloud how he could get a visa to the United States to “visit friends in Miami” and apologized for his rudimentary English.
“He’s like President Maduro,” he said with a mischievous smile, referring to the Venezuelan leader who was detained by the United States in January.
Sandro Castro, one of the grandsons of Fidel Castro and Dalia Soto del Valle, is reportedly a schoolteacher in the island’s center who has lived quietly with the Cuban leader for decades.
The couple had five sons: Alexis, Alex, Alejandro, Antonio, and Ángel. Fidel Castro never made his family public, perhaps because he wanted to protect their privacy or maintain the mystique of a revolutionary whose time was all about his country.
Sandro’s father, Alexis Castro Soto del Valle, a telecommunications engineer, also dabbles in social media. He posts memories of his childhood with his famous family on X, as well as secretly criticizing the Cuban government’s recent economic decisions.
However, in 2024, Alexis Castro posted that he was undergoing a “digital detox” and stopped posting to his X account. When CNN arrived to speak with Sandro, he was on the phone with his father and preparing to talk.
There is no sign that Sandro Castro plans to slow down his video spree, even though he admitted to CNN that his family sometimes asks him to delete controversial posts that mock power outages and fuel shortages.
“He is just joking,” he said, despite calls from pro-government bloggers for his arrest.
He told CNN he wants to make his own beer, buy more nightclubs and cars, but is frustrated by the red tape that surrounds all commerce in Cuba as a result of the system his grandfather put in place.
“We have to open up our economic model and get rid of bureaucracy,” he complained, not sarcastically.
“I’m a revolutionary, but I’m a revolutionary of ideas, progress, and change,” he said, citing current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s slogan, “Continue.”
“I can’t say he’s doing a good job. To me, he’s not doing a good job,” Mr. Castro said of Díaz-Canel, the first Cuban head of state since the revolution not to bear the Castro name and who has enjoyed the vocal support of Mr. Raul and Mr. Fidel Castro over the years.
Sandro Castro said his videos and criticisms of the system led to him being called in and interrogated by Cuba’s National Security Agency. He said he was released with only a warning, not because of his famous last name, but because he had never called for violence or regime change.
Sandro Castro praised his grandfather Fidel and great-uncle Raul, but declined to say whether the revolution they led improved life on the island.
“I was born after 1959, so I can’t say,” he said.
He was more candid about how a deal with President Trump could transform the island’s economy. His latest satirical video shows the actor playing the U.S. president at the Trump Tower Hotel, which looms high over Havana’s skyline.
“There are a lot of people in Cuba who think in a capitalist way. There are a lot of people here who want to do capitalism with sovereignty,” he said.
“I think the majority of Cubans want to be capitalists, not communists,” Castro said.
