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Cuba\u2019s former President Raul Castro waves a Cuban national flag during the commemoration of May Day (Workers\u2019 Day) at Havana\u2019s Revolution Square on May 1, 2025<\/p>\n
YAMIL LAGE<\/p>\n
AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has been having secret, high-level conversations with several people in Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s inner circle, similar to the discussions held with Venezuela\u2019s strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro before he was captured in a military raid earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart told the Miami Herald.<\/p>\n
Though formally retired, Castro, 94, is Cuba\u2019s ultimate authority, and his family is at the center of a communist regime in which the military controls vast economic assets through its conglomerate GAESA and has seats in all the important decision-making entities.<\/p>\n
The Miami Herald has previously reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s advisers met with Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s grandso<\/a>n, Ra\u00fal Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, in the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts last month. But the administration\u2019s outreach efforts, D\u00edaz-Balart said, have been broader than previously reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been conversations with multiple people around Ra\u00fal Castro, basically with everyone around Ra\u00fal, at the highest levels, but they aren\u2019t negotiations,\u201d the Republican congressman from Miami said. \u201cThey\u2019re the kind of conversations they had with Maduro. Even President Trump spoke with Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n President Donald Trump and others held secret talks with Maduro, reportedly discussing his exit from power in Venezuela at the same time his administration was amassing the largest fleet of warships since the end of the Cold War off the coast of Venezuela.<\/p>\n Talks with Maduro, and more recently with Iran\u2019s leadership, were followed by military action.<\/p>\n The congressman did not elaborate on exactly who the administration has spoken to in Cuba. But Castro\u2019s inner circle likely includes his children \u2014 son Col. Alejandro Castro Esp\u00edn and daughters Mariela Castro and Deborah Castro \u2014 as well as top military officers, including the head of GAESA, Gen. Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, who has frequently traveled to Venezuela and Panama with Rodriguez Castro.<\/p>\n In recent days, Trump has been telling reporters his attention will be focused on Cuba once he is done dealing with the conflict in Iran, repeatedly asserting that the Cuban regime is going to \u201cfall\u201d soon and that Cuban leaders want to make a deal with the U.S. \u201cso badly.\u201d His administration has effectively cut oil supplies to the island from Venezuela and Mexico in an effort to bring Cuban leaders to the negotiation table.<\/p>\n Two sources familiar with conversations with Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s inner circle, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the sensitive matter, said there is no deal with Cuba yet. Among the ideas floated are economic deals that could make Cuba dependent on U.S. oil, according to one source. A third source described the administration\u2019s thinking as wanting the United States to become Cuba\u2019s main oil supplier.<\/p>\n Rubio has said Cuba should embark on significant economic reforms and suggested the administration was not expecting Cuba \u201cto change from one day to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is mature and realistic here,\u201d he said in a press conference in Saint Kitts on the same day his team met with Castro\u2019s grandson. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that process play out, for example, in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n Many Cuban exiles in Miami have voiced concern about a potential agreement that would leave the Castro family in power and the communist system relatively intact. D\u00edaz-Balart, the vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee and someone who worked closely with Rubio on Western Hemisphere affairs when the latter was a U.S. senator, was adamant that is not the administration\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n \u201cPartial changes are not acceptable; the concept of Ra\u00fal without Ra\u00fal is not acceptable to this administration,\u201d D\u00edaz-Balart said, referring to the idea that other members of the Castro family could remain in charge of the country.<\/p>\n After floating the possibility of a \u201cfriendly takeover,\u201d Trump suggested on Saturday he was determined to bring about change on the island either way.<\/p>\n Rubio is \u201cdealing [with it] and it may be a friendly takeover; it may not be a friendly takeover. Wouldn\u2019t really matter because they\u2019re down to, as they say, fumes,\u201d Trump said at a press conference in Doral this weekend. \u201cThey have no energy, they have no money. They\u2019re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis.<\/p>\n \u201cVenezuela sends them no energy, no fuel, no oil, no money, no nothing,\u201d Trump added. \u201cWithout Venezuela, they couldn\u2019t have made it. We cut them off from everything else. So yeah, they\u2019re going to make either a deal or we\u2019ll do it just as easy anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he did not believe there was a \u201cnecessity\u201d or \u201cappetite to put boots on the ground\u201d in Cuba.<\/p>\n \u201cI think some of this happens organically,\u201d he said, adding that the political and economic system on the island \u201cis in the process of collapsing because it\u2019s a socialist regime and those experiments never work. If it happens that there\u2019s a regime change there, we don\u2019t need American troops there.\u201d<\/p>\n Publicly, the Cuban government has not shown signs of internal division. Cuban officials have continued unencumbered, vowing to resist U.S. pressure, expressing support for the Iranian leadership, and hanging on to Cuba\u2019s historical status as a pilgrimage site for communists worldwide.<\/p>\n Cuba\u2019s handpicked president, Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel, recently signed the book of condolences at the Iranian embassy in Havana for the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and received members of the International Peoples\u2019 Assembly \u2013 a network of far-left organizations promoting anti-capitalism \u2013 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n In back-channel conversations, the U.S. side has described D\u00edaz-Canel, which has been sidelined in the discussions between the administration and Cubans, as an obstacle to a potential agreement, one of the sources told the Herald.<\/p>\n So far, Cuban officials have broadly acknowledged \u201cconversations\u201d with the U.S. but said there are no official talks between the two governments. They have not outright denied the exchanges with Castro\u2019s grandson.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s gamble on Cuba comes as the country faces one of the worst economic crises in its history. Activists and experts have been raising concerns that the cutoff of oil supplies could worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n Among the population, expectations that a change will come soon are growing. The situation has turned more volatile, as the lack of oil supplies and a collapse of the electrical grid have extended already long blackouts. Residents in several neighborhoods have been protesting at night as the capital has been plunged into darkness, banging pots and pans and shouting anti-government slogans. Anti-government graffiti has also appeared scattered across the country.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, a group of members of different Cuban churches living on the island and abroad signed an open letter calling for Cuban leaders to leave power.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not asking for a political concession, nor for reforms within the system,\u201d they wrote, \u201cbut we are demanding justice, and a change that should begin with the decision to leave and relinquish power in favor of freedom and an immediate democratic transition.\u201d<\/p>\n If the Cuban government is not able to import any oil soon, reserves might run out in a matter of weeks, experts warn. The Trump administration has authorized the sale of U.S. fuel to the private sector but not the government.<\/p>\n D\u00edaz-Balart said he was confident that the regime in Havana would not be able to resist Trump\u2019s advances for too long.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about the president, even when it is not popular, he is very clear that he does not take options off the table,\u201d he said. \u201dMembers of the regime should be thinking about a place to spend the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"United](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MIA_2025-01-03AD1041VenezuelaCelebration.JPG\" "\\"MIA_2025-01-03AD1041VenezuelaCelebration.JPG\\"")
United States Representative Mario D\u00edaz-Balart speaks during a press conference in Doral, Florida, to discuss the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro on Saturday, January 3, 2026. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n
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