US Officials In Talks With Castro’s Grandson Over Cuba’s Future

“Slow-motion regime change” should be the goal, and “Raulito” should listen and “make a deal,” as President Trump has said.

While these talks may not produce the wholesale, immediate regime change many of us have always wanted, it may be the best way toward a transition to democracy and free markets in Cuba, without chaos, violence, and bloodshed requiring U.S. boots on the island.

Meanwhile, there is no better proof that Cuba’s official president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, is just a Castro puppet, as I and others have always said, than the report by Axios that Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio is in secret talks with Raúl Castro’s grandson, instead of him.

Clearly, the Trump Team sees the aging 94-year-old revolutionary, and Fidel Castro’s younger brother, as the communist island’s true decision-maker, its de facto dictator. And his allegedly more pragmatic, business-minded 41-year-old grandson, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, known as “Raulito,” is seen as the best intermediary.

Raulito is also known by his nickname “El Cangrejo” (“The Crab”) because he has a deformed finger.

According to Axios, “Rubio and his team see the grandson and his circle as representing younger, business-minded Cubans for whom revolutionary communism has failed — and who see value in rapprochement with the U.S.”

But – he is also “the apple of his grandfather’s eye,” served as his bodyguard, and has allies running the massive military-business conglomerate known as GAESA, which controls most of the Cuban economy.

These talks are ongoing as the U.S. puts unprecedented pressure on Havana’s corrupt and decrepit regime after Trump, on Jan. 3, captured and extradited Venezuela’s indicted socialist strongman, Nicolas Maduro, to the U.S. Maduro essentially supplied free oil to Cuba, providing the communist island its primary lifeline.

Axios reported that U.S. officials say, as I have also noted, “that the U.S. 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.”

But it didn’t end there. On Jan. 29, Trump threatened sanctions on the island’s other large oil supplier, and socialist friend, Mexico, further tightening the screws on Cuba’s repressive regime.

With these moves and 67 years of communist Cuban economic mismanagement, the totalitarian government appears closer than ever to collapse.

As Axios notes, “the power grid is failing. Hospitals are limiting surgeries. Food and fuel are increasingly scarce. Tourism is drying up, and uncollected garbage is piling up on some street corners.”

Cuba is facing total breakdown and chaos and a massive humanitarian crisis.

Meanwhile, and maybe unfortunately, Axios notes sources as saying that, “the U.S. decision to keep Maduro’s governing partners in power —notably his Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who’s now acting president — signaled to Cuban insiders that Trump and Rubio are willing to make deals with rivals.”

Before Maduro was seized, Rubio and other Trump officials and advisers were in contact with Venezuelan regime members and other elites just as they are doing now with Cuba, sources told Axios.

Following the Venezuela model, also enacted, in part, to avoid the mistakes of, and chaos created by, wholescale regime change in Iraq, many believe Trump could leave some officials in power in Cuba and not seek a total and immediate regime change.

While leaving regime loyalists, criminals and anti-American terrorists safely ensconced in Cuba, for now, would understandably infuriate many Cuban exiles, it may be the best way to begin a transition to democracy on the island.

And that transition, or “slow-motion regime change,” must be the ultimate goal.

As Rubio noted in a Senate hearing last month, U.S. law aims for regime change if Cuba does not free political prisoners, allow for a free press and does not hold elections. And we cannot forget that.

On a more encouraging note, a senior U.S. official said: “Our position — the U.S. government’s position — is [that] the regime has to go. But what exactly that looks like is up to [President Trump] and he has yet to decide.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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