When Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, acknowledged this month that his government was engaged in secret talks with the Trump administration, he also reminded the country who still stands as the final authority within the system. The negotiations, he said, were being guided by the “historical leader of the revolution.”
In Cuba, that title needs no explanation. It refers to Raúl Castro, now 94, whose political weight appears largely undiminished even after his formal withdrawal from the public stage. At a moment when the country is balancing on the edge of economic exhaustion, his name has returned to the center of decision-making.
And with him has returned not only the shadow of the past, but an entire dynastic structure. Against the backdrop of an oil blockade, a deepening humanitarian crisis, and rising pressure from Washington, different members of the Castro family have begun to reappear in negotiations, state management, and the public messaging of the regime’s new survival strategy.
According to Deykom’s preliminary assessment, this is not simply a кадровое reshuffling inside the elite. Cuba’s leadership appears to be attempting a controlled adaptation of the system: presenting new faces without changing the nature of power, and turning family continuity into an instrument of political self-preservation.
In that sense, the return of the Castros is a sign not of strength, but of danger. When a regime feels that outside pressure has become existential, it instinctively turns to its most trusted centers of loyalty. For Havana, that center remains the family that has shaped the Cuban state since 1959.
Historically, that makes almost perfect sense. Fidel and Raúl Castro did not simply lead the revolution that overthrew the old pro-American order; they built a system in which political legitimacy, military control, and the state economy became tightly fused. It is precisely that structure that is now undergoing a new test.
After the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the cutoff of Venezuelan oil shipments, and the intensification of American pressure, Cuba reached a point where fuel shortages began to look like a question of regime survival. Against that backdrop, the Trump administration has made it increasingly clear that it wants not cosmetic adjustments, but a new configuration of power in Havana.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already said publicly that those in charge of Cuba do not know how to fix the crisis and therefore need to be replaced. The problem for Washington, however, is that in Cuba almost any real transition still runs through the old revolutionary network rather than around it.
That is why Raúl Castro remains such a consequential figure. His authority rests not only on his status as Fidel’s younger brother, but also on decades of control over the armed forces, the intelligence apparatus, and the business empire known as GAESA, one of the most influential structures in the Cuban state.
But what is especially striking is that the current crisis now involves not only Raúl himself, but the next generation. His grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as Raulito, had long remained largely a figure from the inner circle. According to the provided material, he has now become one of the intermediaries in contacts with Rubio’s team.
In a system where real power has traditionally been hidden behind the façade of collective leadership, such an appearance matters. Raulito is not simply appearing beside top officials on state television. He is signaling that the Castro family has not receded into history, but is adapting to a new phase in the struggle for survival.
Another important figure is Alejandro Castro Espín, Raúl’s son, a general with deep ties to Cuba’s intelligence services. His return to the negotiating track also looks logical. He already has experience in secret diplomacy, having helped lead Cuba’s side in contacts with the Obama administration that once produced a brief thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations.
But the most interesting development concerns not the coercive wing of the system, but its economic façade. Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, a grandnephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, is emerging as one of the public faces of a new economic line, including the decision to allow Cuban exiles to invest in the island’s economy.
That step can be read as one of the most significant political concessions since 1959. A government that spent decades defining itself through confrontation with the exile community is now being forced to open the door to it — not because of ideological conversion, but because of resource scarcity. Cuba is looking for hard currency, capital, and oxygen for a suffocating system.
That is why both Cuban and international political circles have begun asking whether Pérez-Oliva Fraga could become a kind of “Cuban Delcy” — a figure who might appear more modern, pragmatic, and fluent in the language of business to Washington, while leaving the foundations of the current regime intact.
The comparison is not accidental. After developments in Venezuela, the Trump administration is clearly studying models in which, instead of total collapse, it might secure a managed transition with new operators but without chaos. For part of the Cuban elite, such a model may also look attractive if it guarantees security and preserves property.
But Cuba differs from Venezuela in one essential way. Its elite is far more cohesive, disciplined, and stripped of internal opposition after decades of purges, counterintelligence operations, and rigid control. In that environment, the Castro family is not an anomaly. It is part of the system’s core structure.
That is why expectations of rapid “de-Castrofication” may turn out to be illusory. If Washington believes that replacing a few officials would quickly dismantle the post-revolutionary order, the reality is likely to be far more complex. The Cuban leadership may offer limited renewal while keeping control in the hands of the same network of influence.
That is the central paradox of the moment. A Communist revolution that promised a classless society ultimately produced a closed elite with its own privileges, schools, social circles, and mechanisms for transmitting influence. The Castro family turned out not to be an exception to that system, but its clearest expression.
For the Cuban exile community, especially in the United States, such an outcome would be deeply disillusioning. Many have spent decades pushing not merely for a change of government, but for the complete removal of the Castro name and everything it symbolizes in Cuba’s Communist legacy. Yet the present crisis suggests that the regime may reform its outer shell without abandoning its hereditary core.
The coming months will show whether Cuba moves toward a controlled opening, in which new Castros speak the language of investment, negotiation, and pragmatism, or whether the system once again chooses hard closure. But one fact is already clear: a dynasty many had treated as part of Cuba’s political past has once again become an instrument of its future.
