Published 2026-05-30 23.57
Hardly anyone has heard him speak or knows what he is thinking.
But he stands in the middle of the crisis between the United States and Cuba.
And is singled out as Trump’s key to an agreement.
The 41-year-old is his grandfather’s personal bodyguard Raúl Castro – Cuba’s 94-year-old former president – and is singled out as a major power player in the hidden.
Since Trump increased the pressure on Cuba, he is said to have been selected by the White House as a key person in negotiations about the country’s future.
Called “The Crab”
In Cuba, Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro goes by the name “El Cangrejo” – “The Crab” – because he was born with six fingers, one of which was deformed, on one hand.
Earlier this year Axios revealed that USA‘s Secretary of State Marco Rubio had secret talks with Rodriguez Castro. Sources in the White House then told the site that they see the 41-year-old as “the most important person on the island to have a relationship with”.
Rubio is said to see Rodriguez Castro and his allies as US-friendly corporate types who look past communism to something else – while the 41-year-old belongs to the powerful Castro family.
Met the CIA chief in secret meeting
– The American government’s position is that the regime must go. But exactly how it will happen is up to President Trump and he has not decided yet. Rubio is still in touch with the grandson, a source said to Axios earlier this year.
Contacts between the US and the 41-year-old intensified recently when high representatives from both countries held secret crisis talks on the island.
Among the Americans who flew to Havana was CIA chief John Ratcliffe.
Rodriguez Castro was part of the Cuban delegation together with the Minister of the Interior Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of the intelligence service, writes the New York Post.
Is a mystery
In a CIA statement after the meeting, Rodriguez was mentioned first, even though he was not officially the senior Cuban representative.
The CIA also stated that Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba to “personally deliver President Trump’s message that the United States is ready to cooperate on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”
Despite the fact that the 41-year-old is portrayed as absolutely central in future negotiations, he is something of a mystery in Cuba.
In a longer portrait of Rodriguez Castro in Spanish El Pais it is said that he is an ever-present shadow when Raul Castro moves in public.
“Hardly know how he talks”
The newspaper states that he is now not only responsible for his grandfather – but also for the negotiations between Cuba and the United States.
At the same time, writes El Pais, almost no one in Cuba can explain what role Rodriguez Castro plays in the tense situation.
“People barely know how he talks, what his voice sounds like or what he thinks or thinks,” writes the newspaper.
Juan Almeida García, son of former Cuban Vice President Juan Almeida Bosque, tells El Pais that Rodriguez Castro “is without a doubt Raul Castro’s favorite grandson.”
Overprotected
– The fact that he is the oldest grandchild together with the insecurity he got from being born with a sixth finger made Castro violently overprotective, he tells the newspaper.
– Raul Castro has always been very attached to him and the boy grew up with an excessive degree of protection from his grandfather.
Almeida says that the 41-year-old developed a “quite egocentric personality” through his upbringing.
Historian Enrique del Risco believes that the regime in Cuba, by allowing Rodriguez Castro to participate in such important negotiations with the United States, can use the opportunity to promote him as the heir to the Castro dynasty.
– The fact that no one in the regime dares to question the decision to make him a representative of the Cuban government, even though he has never been part of it, gives an idea of the total lack of judgment in a regime that a family runs as if it were their own private company, he tells El Pais.
