Secretary of State Marco Rubio Raul Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson and caretaker of Cuba’s de facto leader Raul Castro, has held secret talks about Cuba’s future as the United States mounts unprecedented pressure on the regime in Havana, Axios reports.The talks bypassed official Cuban government channels, a sign that the Trump administration views the 94-year-old revolutionary as the true decision-maker on the communist island.“I wouldn’t call these ‘negotiations,’ I would call them ‘discussions’ about the future,” a senior Trump administration official said.
Rubio and his team believe that the 41-year-old grandson and his circle represent young, business-minded Cubans for whom revolutionary communism has failed and who see the value of rapprochement with the United States.“Our position — the U.S. government’s position — is that this regime must go,” the senior official said. “But what exactly that looks like depends on [President Trump] He hasn’t made a decision yet. Rubio is still negotiating with his grandson. “The young Castro was known as “Laurito” and he was known in political circles as “El Cangrejo” (“The Crab”) because of his deformed fingers.With Cuba teetering on the edge of a humanitarian crisis after 67 years of U.S. sanctions and mismanagement, the totalitarian government appears closer to collapse than ever. Electric grids are down, hospitals are limiting surgeries, food and fuel are increasingly scarce, tourism has dried up and uncollected garbage is piling up on some street corners.Troubles intensified after Trump ordered on January 3 the kidnapping and extradition of Venezuela’s indicted socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro, who essentially gave Cuba free oil. On January 29, Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Mexico, another large oil supplier to the island.U.S. officials said the U.S. military’s success and technical superiority in the Maduro operation had shaken Cuba’s leadership, with U.S. troops suffering no losses and killing at least 32 Cuban intelligence and military officials who were supposed to protect Maduro.U.S. officials say the U.S. decision to keep Maduro’s governing partners in power, particularly Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who is now the acting president, signals to Cuban insiders that Trump and Rubio are willing to strike a deal with their rivals. Sources told Axios that before Maduro’s arrest, Rubio and other Trump administration officials and advisers engaged with Venezuelan elites much as they had with Cuba.“They are looking for the next Delsi in Cuba,” said a source familiar with the negotiations.Trump’s advisers have spoken with other influential Cubans in addition to the younger Castro, but he is seen as the most important figure on the island to nurture.“He was the apple of his grandfather’s eye,” said one source, who served as the dictator’s bodyguard and had allies who ran the vast military-industrial conglomerate called GAESA. One source described Rubio’s conversation with Castro as “surprisingly” friendly.“There are no political diatribes about the past. This is about the future,” the source said, noting their shared Cuban heritage and accents are a universal language in Miami and surrounding cities.“Laolito could be directly from Hialeah,” the source said. “This could be a conversation between ordinary people on the streets of Miami.”Analysts say they expect Trump may keep some Cuban officials in power rather than seek wholesale regime change because of memories of the disastrous de-Baathification that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some members of the Castro family, including Raul Castro, may not be forced into exile under a deal with Trump, angering Miami’s Cuban exiles.Rubio did not speak to Cuba’s official leader, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermudez, or other senior officials. Another source familiar with the Trump team’s thinking said the U.S. viewed them as communist “bureaucrats” unable to envision and negotiate change in Cuba.Asked about discussions between the younger Castro and Rubio, the Cuban government sent Axios a statement sent to a Mexican journalist, rebutting talks between the United States and another Castro family member, senior intelligence official Alejandro Castro Espin.“There is no high-level dialogue between the U.S. and Cuban governments. There is not even an intermediate-level dialogue. There is just an exchange of information,” the statement said.“What exists is the usual dialogue that occurs over a long period of time, and even shorter periods of time than that. Until a year ago, we had regular conversations with the State Department at the senior official level. Today, that no longer exists.”Transforming Cuba into more of a U.S. ally is considered a far more difficult task than Venezuela, which has an intact political opposition and a more prosperous economy than Cuba’s impoverished command-and-control state apparatus. Mutual animosity between hardliners in Havana and Miami runs deep on both sides of the Florida Straits.Last week, Cuban-American Republicans in Congress asked Trump to prosecute Raul Castro, who was involved in the 1996 shooting down of a plane carrying members of a U.S. aid group helping Cuban rafters. The Trump administration has not responded.Rubio rarely speaks publicly about his discussions, but at a Senate hearing last month he argued that the purpose of U.S. law is to overthrow the regime if Cuba does not release political prisoners, allow a free press and hold elections. Trump has not decided what action to take against Cuba.
