Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro sat down for his first media interview at a time when his country could scarcely afford to look weak.
Cuba's electricity grid is failing, its currency is continuously losing value, and US warships have repositioned in the Caribbean. His grandfather, Raul Castro Sr, had just been indicted by US authorities over the 1996 downing of two civilian planes.
Raulito, as he is known, does not hold an official title in government, but is regarded as a highly influential figure with a direct line to Cuba's leadership, which is in one of the world's most-watched diplomatic standoffs with the US, one that has escalated dramatically since January.
Despite the pressure, he did not come to plead. He came with a message.
“Cuba does not represent the slightest threat to the interests and national security of the United States … We continue to offer that civilised relationship, that relationship of respect and equal footing,” he told The National.
“Since the very first days of the revolution, our historical leaders always projected, and made it known to the world and to the different governments of the United States, that Cuba and its revolutionary government have always been willing to maintain a cordial relationship,” he said. “Why shouldn't it even be a normal and natural relationship? It has not been Cuba that has thwarted that desire.”
Cuba is at a pivotal moment. On Thursday, the ruling Communist Party approved an emergency economic package with unprecedented free-market measures, expanding private enterprise, municipal autonomy and foreign investment incentives.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the plan draws on China and Vietnam's model of market-oriented reform under one-party rule. US Vice President JD Vance offered a wait-and-see response.
“We're going to see what they do. If they make smart decisions, we're going to have a much better relationship with that island,” Mr Vance said.
The backdrop is grim. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk this month warned that the fuel restrictions imposed since January, combined with extraterritorial sanctions targeting traders, insurers, shipping companies and financial institutions, have driven daily blackouts that regularly exceed 20 hours. Children are dying as doctors are cut off from essential medical supplies and medicine.
Olive branch and a firm line
Raulito was careful to frame Cuba's overtures as consistency, not concession. “We continue to believe that the path of dialogue is the one that brings us closer, not confrontation,” he said. “But those opportunities will never be based on conditioning, on impositions, and our people bowing to demands that will not be possible.”
He was equally candid about the conditions under which those conversations are taking place. “It is really difficult to sustain any type of conversation, discussion, negotiation or dialogue in a very hostile environment of coercive measures, threats and pretensions of conditioning and imposition,” he said.
On military confrontation, he was equally firm. “There is no reason for the United States to militarily aggress Cuba. It has been demonstrated, even US agencies have acknowledged, that Cuba represents no risk to the national security of the United States. Our people will not be subjugated.”
He added: “We are included on a list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, when it is known that Cuba has no relationship with terrorism, and this is recognised internationally and particularly in the United States.”
His colleague, Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Carlos Mendez, addressed the American business community directly. “We want US businesspeople to know and understand that Cuba is a country open to investment … ranging from mining, tourism, real estate, banking and finance,” he said. “Differences exist between our governments that should not prevent the business community from participating in the Cuban economy.”
Rubio's war, Trump's deal
For analysts, Raulito's message lands in a fractured political environment where the identity of the decision-maker matters as much as the decision.
Prof William LeoGrande of American University is unequivocal in his view. “Rubio, I think unquestionably [Marco] Rubio,” he says of who is driving the pressure campaign, noting that the Secretary of State himself once captioned a post to the effect that he and fellow Cuban-American congressman Mario Diaz-Balart write President Donald Trump's Cuba policy. “Typically, he'll say a sentence or two … and then he turns it over to Rubio to actually give a substantive answer.”
That matters because Mr Trump's instincts have historically been transactional. Helen Yaffe, professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow, notes that Mr Trump sent business representatives to Cuba in the 1990s to explore hotel and golf course opportunities.
“They have a different objective, a slightly different approach,” Prof Yaffe says of the President and the Secretary of State. For Mr Rubio, the motivation is something closer to vengeance. “His career was built representing that lobby … he wants nothing short of regime change, and it's like a vengeance thing.”
Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuba research fellow at Georgia College, frames it in starker terms. “All his political life is based on the idea that the Cuban revolution was an accident,” he says of Mr Rubio.
It is, Mr Lopez-Levy warns, “a formula for disaster”, but this is rational on Mr Rubio's terms, since without full American backing, the exile community has no path to victory.
The deeper obstacle may lie inside Cuba itself. Geopolitical analyst Mario Braga at RANE Network, a global risk intelligence company, identifies an internal impasse: different factions have not agreed on how far to go, generating frustration in the Trump administration.
At the centre sits GAESA, the military-run conglomerate estimated to control 40 to 70 per cent of the economy. “They would be much less inclined to agree to a US demand, for example, to break up this conglomerate, to open it to private-sector participation, to improve transparency rules, because they would have direct stakes to lose,” Mr Braga says.
Agreement out of reach
When Mr Mendez was asked directly whether the two sides were close to lifting the embargo, he was candid. “I would like to answer yes to that question, but the reality is no,” he said. “We have no sanctions against the United States. What we have is the willingness to welcome US businesses.”
Prof LeoGrande thinks there could be a shift if the US accepts it will not get regime change. “I think there's a lot of room for movement on the economic issues … that might be enough to get a deal. But I don't know.”
“As long as the revolution exists, Cuba will not leave any Cuban behind or forgotten,” Raulito said in closing. “That outlook, that vision, is a great priority.”
