Cuba's Castro regime in talks with US over political reform - The Times

US officials have held talks with the grandson of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former head of state, to explore a potential deal to ease American sanctions against the Communist regime in exchange for political reform.

Aides to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, met with Castro on the sidelines of a Caribbean conference in St Kitts on Wednesday to discuss a possible rollback of the economic blockade that has pushed Cuba to the brink of humanitarian collapse.

“It has a very severe and catastrophic economic crisis on its hands and if someone in their system has information to share with us about changes they’re open to making, or moves they’re prepared to accept, we would certainly listen to that,” Rubio said.

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The talks come against a backdrop of dire social conditions in Cuba, the western hemisphere’s last communist state. A decades-long trade embargo and recent tightening of the US stranglehold on oil supplies have brought fuel shortages, a transportation freeze, power cuts and the most severe food and economic crisis since the 1990s.

On the same day that Rubio’s team met with Castro, ten Cuban exiles seeking to start a civil uprising launched what authorities in Havana described as an “armed infiltration”, using a stolen boat that they drove from the Florida Keys to Cuba.

Four of them were killed and six wounded in a firefight with Cuban border agents patrolling a mile or so off the island’s north coast.

Two of those captured, Amijail Sánchez González and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, had been on a “terrorist” list since 2023, Cuban authorities said. “Anti-Cuban groups operating in the United States resort to terrorism as an expression of their hatred for Cuba and the impunity they believe they enjoy,” a government statement read.

Loved ones in the US described the group as “heroes and martyrs” who had been active in the pro-democracy movement through the successive regimes of Fidel Castro, who seized power in 1959, Raúl Castro, who took over the presidency after his brother’s death in 2008, and current president Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Despite having officially retired in 2018, Raúl Castro, 94, remains the main power behind the scenes, alongside his grandson Raúl, 41, a lieutenant colonel in the interior ministry.

Rubio, who is Cuban-American, said that the US state department and coast guard were “still gathering facts” on the shooting incident. “We don’t generally make decisions in the United States on the basis of what Cuban authorities are saying,” he said.

Misael Ortega Casanova, whose brother Michel was among the dead, said that the mission was motivated by an “obsessive and diabolical” urge to free Cuba from 74 years of authoritarian rule and end the “great suffering” of its people.

“Only us Cubans who have lived over there understand,” Casanova told the Associated Press. His brother had lived in the US for 20 years, became an American citizen and worked as a truck driver.

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The Cuban government said that authorities were working on identifying the other three passengers who were killed. The survivors were initially identified as Amijail Sanchez González, Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, Conrad Galindo Sariol, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Castello, Christian Ernesto Acosta Guevara and Roberto Azcorra Consuegra.

However, the foreign ministry later issued a statement saying that it had mistakenly added the name of [Rolando Roberto Ascorra] Consuegra to its initial list of captured crew members. It confirmed he was not part of the group, although the ministry also alleged that he had been previously linked to “violent intentions against Cuba”.

The error led to some speculation in Miami that perhaps Cuba had some advance warning about the operation, possibly with a list of the crew members.

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Friends of the ten men said that they had come together through a Cuban exile activist group over TikTok and other social media sites, but that their mission came as a shock.

“No one knew. My mother is devastated,” said Casanova. “They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences, nor their own lives.”

The Republican Party of Cuba (PRC), which represents political opposition both on and off the island, confirmed that Casanova was a party member, but said they had been “totally unaware of his intentions, plans or involvement”.

“The PRC does not orient armed actions, nor does it exercise control over individual decisions or actions that may assume its members or followers on a personal basis,” Ibrahim Bosch, the party’s president, said. He added that decades of repression had pushed people to acute desperation.