Raúl Castro: The Last Giant of the Cuban Revolution

Former

Cuban President Raúl Castro has been charged by the United States (US) with conspiracy to kill US nationals over the downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida in 1996. According to a press release issued by the Office of Public Affairs at the US Department of Justice, he was charged along with “Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez of Las Tunas, Cuba; Emilio José Palacio Blanco; José Fidel Gual Barzaga; Raul Simanca Cardenas; and Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, for their alleged roles in the Feb. 24, 1996 shoot-down of two unarmed U.S. civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), also known as Hermanos al Rescate, over international waters”.

Based in Miami, BTTR was an organisation that conducted humanitarian flight operations across the Florida Straits to search for Cuban migrants in distress. “As alleged, beginning in the early 1990s, Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated the organisation and relayed detailed information about its flight operations back to the Cuban government. These reports were allegedly used by military leadership in planning the Feb. 24, 1996 operation,” states the press release from the Office of Public Affairs.They were also charged with two counts of destruction of aircraft and four counts of murder.

He is frail, 94 years old and no longer holds any official power, but Raúl Castro still wields influence in Cuba. He is still revered as “the leader of the Cuban Revolution”. Along with his brother Fidel Castro, he toppled a US-aligned dictator. Raúl Castro served as Cuba’s defence minister for nearly five decades and became its president after Fidel Castro stepped down in February 2008.

The Life of Raúl Castro

Born on June 3, 1931, he is the younger brother of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Born in Cuba’s Holguín province, he was the youngest of six siblings.Their sister Juanita Castro wrote in her book Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers: The Secret Story, “They would talk for hours, and Raúl, the youngest, would listen with enormous attention, almost without blinking, to the political talks that Fidel gave him.” He was known to be a heavy drinker who loved vodka and Cuban rum, and he admired the former Soviet Union.

The socialist and communist ideals of the Soviet Union inspired both him and his brother. He became a key figure in the Cuban Revolution when he joined Fidel Castro’s movement in 1952 to overthrow Cuban military leader and dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was backed by the US. Batista’s anti-communist stance, tyrannical rule and alliance with the US ultimately led to Fidel Castro’s revolution.On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro and about 140 rebels attacked the federal garrison at Moncada. Raúl Castro was also part of the attack. The operation was carefully planned, but it failed, and many rebels were captured and executed. The Castro brothers were put on trial and jailed, but escaped execution. They may have lost in their first attempt, but the Moncada attack went down in history as the first armed assault of the Cuban Revolution. The brothers were released under international pressure in 1955 and ultimately took control of Cuba, while Batista fled into exile.“After the revolution, it was Raúl Castro who built the new Revolutionary Armed Forces, which repelled the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion organised by the CIA. When Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a communist state in 1961, Raúl Castro did the heavy lifting to organise the Cuban Communist Party,” wrote David C. Adams for The New York Times.

While Fidel Castro was known to be temperamental and the face of the revolution, it was Raúl Castro who served as its backbone. It was under him that the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces were formed. The force rose to global prominence by defeating the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.He was also known for introducing economic and social reforms and, according to a 1994 Time magazine article, the brothers also ran “quasi-private corporations, from tourist hotels to department stores”.Cuba’s relationship with the US had been strained ever since the revolutionary years. “Four years into his role as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raúl Castro had made enough strides in reforming Cuba’s communist policies that then-President Barack Obama decided it was finally time to normalise relations,” wrote Drew Pittock for USA Today.

Barack Obama became the first US president to visit Cuba in 2016, after meeting Raúl Castro several times since 2013. The period became known as the “Cuban Thaw”. Relations between the two countries progressed smoothly, even though the leaders did not agree on everything. Raúl Castro stepped down as party leader in 2021.The charges now place one of the last surviving figures of the Cuban Revolution back under international scrutiny.