The Castro on Instagram who bumps, grinds and takes Trump on a Cuban joyride.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
By MARIA ABI-HABIB and EMILIANO RODRÍGUEZ MEGA
The Castro family has controlled Cuba tightly for nearly 70 years, their personal lives shrouded in secrecy.
But now one of them is an influencer on Instagram.
Sandro Castro, 33, is a grandson of Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s Communist revolution. With some 152,000 followers on Instagram, the Havana-based Sandro Castro sports a stylish haircut, a stubbly beard and a love of hip sunglasses. He is often quick to gyrate his body in provocative videos that garner thousands of clicks and likes.
But his skits also highlight something much more sensitive and contentious: how far Cuba has deteriorated under his family’s rule.
His subtle digs at the government’s inability to provide basic services for its people are a fraught topic in a country where Fidel Castro is idolized for his promises to build an egalitarian society.
But it’s nearly 70 years since the Communist revolution. Today, mismanagement by the Cuban government, along with a U.S. trade embargo and other sanctions, have led to poverty, empty bellies, an energy-starved island often plunged into darkness and a medical system — once the envy of Latin America — struggling to provide basic care.
In one video, Castro courts a grimy gas canister to spotlight the country’s fuel shortage and calls his country Apagonia, a word that plays off the Spanish term for blackout.
Some government defenders denounce Castro as an ideological traitor, while others criticize the depictions of his own life for showing how much better he has it than most Cubans. Some supporters urge him to call out his family as the cause of Cuba’s problems. (President Donald Trump’s blockade of oil imports has deepened the country’s crisis).
“He’s become a flashpoint for these questions about Cuba’s future and social inequality,” said Michael J. Bustamante, chair of Cuban studies at the University of Miami. “He’s not breaking with the system, but he’s definitely pushing the boundaries.”
Cuba watchers and Communist opponents and supporters alike scrutinize his every post, combing them over to see if he is offering any crumbs of insider knowledge he may have as a Castro.
In a recent video, he rejected a (fake) call from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue his domino game with friends, leading commenters to question whether he was foreshadowing something about Cuba’s ongoing talks with the United States.
On the day Cuba’s government acknowledged those talks, Castro posted a skit of an orange-faced Trump knocking on his door. The U.S. president implores him to negotiate a deal with Washington, saying “I want to buy Cuba.”
Castro tells him he is crazy, then takes him on a tour of Cuba as Trump says he wants to build mansions on the Havana waterfront.
Castro did not respond to a request for comment.
He was born in 1991, the son of Alexis Castro del Valle — one of Fidel Castro’s five children. But unlike the Communist leader, Sandro Castro’s father became a photographer and a camera operator for television and documentaries, seeming to stay out of politics.
Sandro Castro also appears to have shied away from politics, apparently never holding a government or Communist Party position, Cuba academics and experts say. His cousin, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, is currently in talks with the United States over a political and economic transition for the island.
Critics often view Sandro Castro as the embodiment of his family’s elitism. In his videos, he flaunts beer, beautiful women, fashionable Nike clothing and a posh-looking home. Fidel Castro also didn’t always live the life of modesty he urged Cubans to follow and was famous for wearing two Rolex watches together.
While many on the island nation struggle to find basics like milk for their babies, the bar that Castro owns in Havana, EFE, posts videos of the cocktails and the freshly baked pizzas it sells, topped with piles of ham. The bar serves gin and tonics for 1,000 pesos (just under $2 on the informal exchange rate) while a mojito is 700 pesos, according to its menu.
The average monthly salary in Cuba is just under 7,000 pesos, according to government data released in November.
But Castro’s Instagram account also points out many of the disparities the island nation faces, even if addressed in satirical formats.
While the Cuban government does tolerate some criticism, it has pushed out many critics openly calling for protests and political change, who now live in exile in places like Miami or Mexico. But so far, it seems, Castro has not been censored.
In one clip, he sexually strokes a nozzle at a gas station. “What is this? I’ve been at it for 24 hours and nothing is coming out,” he says in the video published last month amid widespread gas shortages.
“Another day here in Apagonia, with a huge thirst,” he says in another post.
Across the bar he spots what appears to be a gas canister, which he approaches. “There is not a moment when I cannot be without you,” he says, while proposing marriage as they spread out on a bed. “In fact, I thought I would never find you. I hope you never leave again.”
Castro’s followers have egged him on to call out his family directly, a punishable offense on the island that he has so far avoided.
Others say he has betrayed the revolution.
“Sandro Castro is an ideological enemy,” Pedro Jorge Velázquez, another influencer known as “El Necio” and a vocal defender of the Cuban government, said last year on social media. “It is a shame that no state security official has turned up at his home to summon him for questioning, because what Sandro is doing undermines the security of this country.”
Whether Castro is a cunning but subtle change agent remains to be seen. But he drew hundreds of commenters last month in a video in which he seemed to be asking for a “Cuba Libre.” Was he calling for a Cuba free from Communist rule, or simply ordering the famous cocktail of rum, coke, and lime?
In the clip, a bartender offers Castro a Cristal, Cuba’s national beer. “No,” he says, “what I want is a Cuba Libre, brother.”
The bartender replies that he doesn’t have Coca-Cola, a scarce product on the island because of the U.S. trade embargo. “Well, when you have Coca-Cola, let me know, because right now that is my favorite drink,” Castro replies.
He then exits the bar and says to the camera: “Better times are coming.”