In a country where regular internet access is still considered a luxury, Cuban nightclub owner Sandro Castro, grandson of late leader Fidel Castro, has amassed more than 150,000 followers on Instagram.
Unlike the rest of his extremely reserved and often secretive relatives, Sandro openly seeks fame and notoriety, even provoking the island’s communist government.
But, in an exclusive interview given to CNN during a nighttime visit, in the midst of one of the frequent blackouts that plague the island, the 33-year-old said he was misunderstood.
“I’m making videos about a tense and sad situation,” Castro said, referring to rising tensions between the island and the government of US President Donald Trump, which have further accelerated Cuba’s economic collapse.
“At least I’m trying to make people happy,” Castro concluded.
“To make them smile. I would never make fun of a situation that I also face,” he added.
A life of privileges in Cuba
Castro’s posts offer a rare glimpse into a life of privilege unimaginable to most Cubans, as he occasionally criticizes members of the communist apparatus who succeeded his grandfather, who died in 2016, and his great-uncle Raúl, who left the presidency in 2018.
A recent Instagram video showed an actor in a sloppy wig pretending to be arriving at Castro’s doorstep and trying to buy Cuba from him.
“We can do business because you’re a showman and businessman like me,” the fake Trump says to the real Castro.
“What do you want to buy!? Calm down!” responds Castro.
Mocking Trump’s threat to take control of Cuba and the country’s growing economic crisis would seem insensitive, not to mention dangerous, in a nation that has warned its citizens about the need to prepare for war.
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Castro getting away with a similar maneuver.
But Sandro Castro said that, like many other Cubans, he is fed up with the direction the country is taking.
“It’s very difficult,” Castro said of the growing crisis that has led some Cubans to protest the government and others to scavenge trash bins for food.
“You suffer from thousands of problems. In one day, there may be a lack of electricity, water. The goods do not arrive […] It’s so difficult, very difficult,” Castro said.
It was nighttime, but he wore designer sunglasses for the interview at his apartment in Havana’s isolated Kohly neighborhood, where many Cuban military and intelligence officers reside.
“Indignation generates likes”
Amid an island-wide energy crisis, the debate over how much Castro actually suffers while drinking ice-cold Cuban beers and powering his modern bachelor pad with an EcoFlow battery generator will likely only deepen the controversy surrounding an heir to Cuba’s most famous family.
Castro claims he is not “rich like Dubai”, that his family does not own mansions or yachts and says that he does not even have gasoline to fuel his car. But in a country where the average salary is less than $20 a month, Castro appears to be doing quite well. Even with the Cuban economy collapsing, on social media, for Castro and his friends, the party never ends.
He is perhaps the rarest figure in Cuba; someone who unites the two political extremes that have debated the future of the nation for almost 70 years, sharing contempt for it.
For Cuban exiles who fled the 1959 revolution, he is a symbol of pure hypocrisy, one of the descendants of a communist leader who banned private enterprise for decades and advocated austerity, but who at the same time enjoys the fruits of capitalism.
For the most ardent supporters of the Cuban revolution, he is a traitor to the proletarian class, who profits from his revolutionary lineage to get clicks and likes.
“He’s taking advantage of ‘hate me,’” said Ted Henken, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Baruch College in New York who has studied the spread of the internet in Cuba.
“The Kardashians, Paris Hilton and him are also taking advantage of this envy or this ‘look at my fabulous lifestyle’.”
“It’s impossible to look away,” he said.
“Indignation generates likes and followers,” he said.
Castro denies being a millionaire and rejects the possibility that his family connections protect him or make his life easier than those of other Cubans. His nightclub on one of Havana’s main avenues “only” cost him $50,000, he said, an amount beyond the imagination of most Cubans.
“The little I have is the result of my effort, my sacrifice”, he stated.
Does being a Castro help in Cuba? “My name is my name. I’m proud of my name, logically. But I don’t see this help you talk about. I’m just another citizen,” he said.
During the interview, Castro also wondered aloud how he would get a US visa to “visit friends in Miami” and apologized for his rudimentary English.
“It’s like Maduro,” he said with a sly smile, referring to the Venezuelan dictator arrested by the US in January.
“The majority of Cubans want to be capitalists”
Sandro Castro is one of the grandchildren of Fidel Castro and Dalia Soto del Valle, who, according to reports, was a teacher in the center of the island and lived discreetly with the Cuban leader for decades.
The couple had five children: Alexis, Alex, Alejandro, Antonio and Angel. Fidel Castro, whether because he wanted to protect his family’s privacy or maintain the mystery of a revolutionary who only had time for his country, never publicly revealed the existence of his family.
Alexis Castro Soto del Valle, Sandro’s father and telecommunications engineer, has also ventured into social media. He published memories of his childhood on the social network X, as well as veiled criticisms of the Cuban government’s recent economic decisions.
But in 2024, Alexis Castro announced that he was doing a “digital detox” and stopped posting on his X account. Sandro was on the phone with his father preparing the main points of the interview when the CNN arrived to talk to him.
There is no evidence, however, that Sandro Castro has any intention of slowing down his posts, although he admitted to CNN that his family sometimes asks him to remove his controversial posts, in which he mocks blackouts and fuel shortages.
“I’m just joking,” he said, even as pro-government bloggers called for his arrest.
He told the CNN who wants to produce his own beer and buy more nightclubs and cars, but is frustrated with the bureaucracy that surrounds all commerce in Cuba, a result of the system implemented by his grandfather.
“We need to open the economic model, eliminate bureaucracy”, he lamented, without irony.
“I am a revolutionary, but a revolutionary of ideas, of progress, of change”, he said, referring to the current Cuban president’s slogan of “continuity”.
“I wouldn’t say he’s doing a good job. For me, he’s not doing a good job,” Castro said of Díaz-Canel, the first Cuban head of state not since the revolution and who has enjoyed the outspoken support of Raúl and Fidel Castro over the years.
Sandro Castro stated that his videos and criticism of the system led Cuban State Security to summon him for interrogation. He was released with just a warning, he said, not because of his famous surname, but because he never incited violence or regime change.
While praising his grandfather Fidel and great-uncle Raúl, Sandro Castro refused to say whether the revolution they led had improved life on the island.
“I was born after 1959, so I can’t say,” he said.
He was more emphatic about how a deal with Trump could revolutionize the island’s economy. In his latest video, he presents the actor who plays the American president with an imposing “Trump” hotel on the Havana skyline.
“There are many people in Cuba who think in a capitalist way. There are many people here who want to practice capitalism with sovereignty,” he said.
“I think the majority of Cubans want to be capitalists, not communists,” concluded Castro.
