Secretary of State
Marco Rubio held secret talks with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson and caretaker of Cuba’s de facto leader Raul Castro, regarding the future as the US put unprecedented pressure on Havana’s regime, Axios reported.
The talks bypassed official Cuban govt channels and showed that the Trump administration viewed the 94-year-old revolutionary as the communist island’s true decision-maker.
"I wouldn't call these 'negotiations' as much as 'discussions' about the future," a senior Trump administration official said.
Rubio and his team saw the 41-year-old grandson and his circle as representing younger, business-minded Cubans for whom revolutionary communism failed and who saw value in rapprochement with the US.
"Our position — the U.S. government's position — is the regime has to go," the senior official said. "But what exactly that looks like is up to [President Trump] and he has yet to decide. Rubio is still in talks with the grandson."
Known as "Raulito", the younger Castro was known in political circles by his nickname "El Cangrejo" ("The Crab") because he had a deformed finger.
After 67 years of US sanctions and Cuban mismanagement, the totalitarian govt appeared closer than ever to collapse as the island teetered on the edge of a humanitarian crisis. The power grid was failing, hospitals were limiting surgeries, food and fuel were increasingly scarce, tourism was drying up, and uncollected garbage was piling up on some street corners.
The troubles accelerated after Trump ordered the Jan. 3 abduction and extradition of Venezuela’s indicted socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro, who essentially supplied free oil to Cuba. On Jan. 29, Trump threatened sanctions on the island’s other large oil supplier, Mexico.
US officials said the US military’s success and technical superiority in the Maduro operation shook Cuba’s leadership after American forces suffered no losses and killed at least 32 Cuban intelligence and military officials who were supposed to be guarding Maduro.
US officials said the US decision to keep Maduro’s governing partners in power, notably his Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who was now acting president, signalled to Cuban insiders that Trump and Rubio were willing to make deals with rivals. Before Maduro was seized, Rubio and other Trump administration officials and advisers were in contact with Venezuelan elites just as they were doing with Cuba, sources told Axios.
"They're looking for the next Delcy in Cuba," a source familiar with the talks said.
Trump advisers spoke with other influential Cubans besides the younger Castro, but he was seen as the most important figure on the island to cultivate.
"He's the apple of his grandfather's eye," served as the dictator's bodyguard, and also has allies running the mammoth military-business conglomerate known as GAESA, said one source who described the Rubio-Castro conversations as "surprisingly" friendly.
"There's no political diatribes about the past. It's about the future," the source said, noting their common Cuban heritage and accents that were the lingua franca of Miami and surrounding cities.
"Raulito could be straight out of Hialeah," the source said. "This could be a conversation between regular guys on the streets of Miami."
Analysts said they expected Trump could leave some officials in power in Cuba and not seek a wholesale regime change because of memories of the disastrous de-Baathification after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some Castro family members, including Raul Castro, might not be forced into exile under a deal with Trump, which would outrage Cuban exiles in Miami.
Rubio did not speak with Cuba’s official leader, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, or other high-ranking officials. Another source familiar with the Trump team’s thinking said they were perceived by the US to be communist party "apparatchiks" unable to envision and negotiate change in Cuba.
Asked about the discussions between the younger Castro and Rubio, Cuba’s govt sent Axios a statement issued to a Mexican journalist disputing rumoured talks between the US and another Castro family member, Alejandro Castro Espín, a senior intelligence official.
"There is no high-level dialogue between the government of the United States and Cuba. There is not even dialogue at an intermediate level. There have been exchanges of messages," the statement said.
"What exists are the usual conversations that have taken place over a long period of time — or even less than that. Until a year ago, we had regular dialogues at the senior official level with the State Department. Today, that no longer exists."
Converting Cuba into more of a US ally was described as a far harder task than Venezuela, which had an intact political opposition and more of a thriving economy when compared to Cuba’s destitute command-and-control state apparatus. The mutual animosity between hardliners in Havana and Miami was deeply ingrained on both sides of the Straits of Florida.
Last week, Cuban American Republicans in Congress asked Trump to indict Raul Castro in the 1996 shootdown of a plane carrying members of a US-based aid group that helped Cuban rafters. The Trump administration did not respond.
Rubio said little publicly about his discussions, but in a Senate hearing last month he pointed out US law aimed for regime change if Cuba did not free political prisoners, allow for a free press and did not hold elections. Trump did not decide on a course of action with Cuba.