Castro, a Dynasty to Cuba

This article is published in the 18/19 issue of Vanity Fair on newsstands until May 11, 2021

IS one day in February, Sandrito keeps his hands on the wheel of a new Mercedes. White t-shirt, blue shorts. He is radiant. His girlfriend’s smartphone picks it up. “You know that we are humble, but every now and then we have to bring out our toys that we have at home,” he tells her euphorically. Then step on the accelerator, the speedometer reads 140. The road is deserted under the nervous sky of the Caribbean.

Sandrito is made for the sweet life: on Instagram he is photographed on a sports convertible, dressed as a Batman for Halloween or with a cocktail in hand in one of the bars that rumors want he owns, the Fantaxy or the Illuxion or the Efe. We are in Cuba. And the shortage of food, petrol and medicine clashes with Sandrito’s pastimes. The fact is, he’s not just anyone here. To the registry office is Sandro Castro Arteaga, 29, son of Alexis, the eldest son of the «Líder Máximo» Fidel Castro and Dalia Soto del Valle. And the clamor for that Mercedes is so much that, a few days later, Sandrito returns to the video: this time he is at home, distraught, asks for “a big apology”, swears that the luxurious car is not his and that the video was stolen from Whatsapp.

Taken from the events of the English or Spanish, we do not pay attention to the fact that even in the Caribbean there is a “royal” family. They are called Castro. And like all royalty, they are at the center of whispers, scandals and legends. Buried Fidel five years ago, his brother Raúl also retired to private life last week, no Castro has formally a position at the top of the regime anymore. This is only partially true, because in these 62 years the clan has occupied positions of privilege and power, thus fueling a real saga despite the efforts of the patriarchs to keep private affairs hidden. Just like in all royal families, in short. Yoani Sánchez, commenting on Raúl’s withdrawal, spoke of a “Castroism without Castro”. She is the veteran of independent journalists and has been running the online newspaper for seven years 14ymedio“As long as the heirs of power do not dismantle this inheritance,” he says, “it will be as if both brothers were in command of the ship.”

The ship is Cuba. The island is going through an economic crisis that the country has not seen since the fall of the USSR; Venezuela is no longer generous with oil, the pandemic has stopped tourists and investments, Trump has tightened sanctions and with Biden no one knows. The regime is cautiously launching a battery of reforms to open up the economy, but it takes time. Meanwhile, an increasingly combative civil society is pounding, thanks also to digital and social media. They are in their twenties and thirties, mostly independent artists, teachers and reporters, and they are no longer afraid. The regime hates them, pillars them on TV, indicates them as mercenaries. Already during the four-day party congress, we can hardly contact the most prominent journalists, subjected to surveillance, under house arrest or left without the Internet.

Raúl passed the baton to leaders born after the 1959 Revolution, but the watchword is “continuity”. Wrote Abraham Jiménez Enoa, editor of another online magazine, The sneeze: “Continuity means, as in the last sixty years, that a handful of people, the Communist dome, arbitrarily decide the fate of a country”. Alongside the new bureaucrats, the family clan also moves, in which some power figures stand out, others as probable figureheads of the business world and finally braggart nephews like Sandrito.

But who are the Castro? Three have prominent political posts. First of all, Alejandro Castro Espín, figlio di Raúl. Colonel, nicknamed “El Tuerto” for having lost an eye in Angola (without ever fighting, he admits himself), he has the intelligence files in hand and has followed the opening with the US in Obama’s time. He is a man in the shadows and even his 20-year-old sons – Fidel Ernesto and Raúl Alejandro – use social media with more discretion than their cousins.

The other most powerful man in the clan is Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, ex-husband of Déborah, daughter of Raúl: general, leads GAESA, the holding company of the armed forces that controls the island’s economy and has now joined the party’s powerful Buró. His two sons, Raúl Guillermo and Vilma, are also famous for other reasons. The first – Raulito or “El Cangrejo” – is a bodyguard and personal assistant to his grandfather Raúl. He is so attached to him that he breaks the protocols in state visits: a memorable gesture by François Hollande who pushes him away on the Elysée steps. Sister Vilmita, on the other hand, hit the headlines for putting her (perhaps) magnificent holiday home, the «Casa Vida Luxury Holidays», on Airbnb at the end of 2019. The price for one night? $ 650.

Then there is Mariela, Raúl’s other daughter: the best known figure, even abroad. Deputy, she directs Cenesex, the National Center for Sexual Education, which in recent years has promoted legal protection for gays, lesbians and transgenders. Perhaps to mend the wounds left by her father and uncle, who had thought of resolving the issue with labor camps and exile, Mariela here found her niche of power that she defends with her nails. He defends her from the old guard and also from those who escape his paternalism and claims full freedom: then his affable manner and his reputation as a liberal yield to threatening and insolent tweets. Mariela, in her third marriage, built a bridge with Italy: Paolo Titolo, a photojournalist from Palermo, found himself in 2004 at the helm of the branch of Amorim Negócios Internacionais SA. This is the import-export giant founded by the Portuguese Américo Amorim, an old friend of Fidel and Raúl, who also died a few years ago and in the meantime stumbled on justice. Among the troubles, the suspicion of being a dirty money laundry of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the former Angolan president who the Castro saved in the 1980s. The fact is that becoming Raúl’s son-in-law was Paolo Titolo’s luck.

At the center of the Castro saga, however, remains the leader of the revolution, Fidel, who died in 2016. Many love affairs and numerous offspring are whispered about him, in a sort of great popular novel. With his first wife (Mirta Díaz-Balart, prominent family of the Fulgencio Batista regime) the Commander had a stormy history and a son, Fidelito: tugged in childhood from one parent to another, a career as a nuclear physicist, at the head of the bankrupt Cuban nuclear program, ended up suicidal in 2018. Alina was born from an adventure of Fidel with Natalia Revuelta, who fled to the USA in 1993, wig and fake passport, and immediately became the face of Miami anti-astrism. Finally, the longest-lived first lady: Dalia Soto del Valle. Five children, some in the limelight, others in the background. Antonio, for example, is a surgeon made (vice) president of the baseball federation, although his passion is golf and fishing; he has a reputation as a playboy and was repeatedly caught in luxury hotels: five years ago the Turkish magazine Gala he told of his arrival at the Bodrum resort aboard a 50-meter yacht, for a holiday worth a thousand euros per night and five suites. Passions shared by his son, 20-year-old Tony: a model of vocation, he has a penchant for travel to Europe, BMWs and yachts, as he shared on Instagram. We could also talk about Alexander, another son of Fidel, husband of Kenelma Carvajal, Deputy Minister of Culture, but he prefers to devote himself to photography and his Facebook profile with a rather scurrilous nickname, “Roberto Nabo Duro”, whose translation we leave to all intuition of those who are reading us.

Even if on the Net they define it as a “dysfunctional family”, the Castros remain at the center of attention by dividing the audience between those who adore them and those who hate them. Fidel and Raúl themselves were the first to build their political fortune precisely on this relentless choice, forcing the world to take sides. “Socialism or death” is the slogan, which has become a brand, which leaves no alternatives. Guarantees the royal family. One day, when it rained insults to life cool by Tony Castro, the young man replied (again on Instagram) with the bay of Havana behind him and a white T-shirt with the slogan “Resist, win», Resist and win. A true Castro heir.

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In the photo above (Ansa), the passing of the baton between Raúl Castro (89) and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, new guide of the Cuban Communist Party.