The hardliners (Taliban) of the Cuban regime cannot stand that the young man displays the contradictions of the system
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, July 5, 2025 — The orthodoxy of Castroism has unleashed a strong offensive against the most viral grandson of Fidel Castro, founder of the oldest dictatorship in Latin America. Sandro Castro has gained more than 100,000 followers on Instagram for brazenly demonstrating the strong contrasts in today’s Cuba. While most suffer blackouts, shortages and hardships, a privileged few like him will never know the words sacrifice or effort. His main sin has been to break a golden rule in his family: enjoy and shut up.
Yuliet Teresa Villares, communication coordinator at the Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial Center, suggests in a publication that Sandro is an “unpunished shithead”. The propagandist Pedro Jorge Velázquez -nicknamed El Necio – calls him an “ideological enemy” on X. Ernesto Limia, vice-president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, publishes a pamphlet on Facebook, fills it with appointments to cover his back, and finally releases it: “Sandro is an idiot.” Immediately the former spy Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, high priest of the monitoring committees, blesses his post with an “amen.”
Pedro Jorge Velázquez – nicknamed El Necio – calls him an “ideological enemy” on X
Sandro is the son of Alexis Castro Soto del Valle, the eldest of five sons of Fidel and Dalia. The boy’s mother, Rebecca Arteaga, has been a faithful observer of the family golden rule and keeps a low profile.
The boy assaulted his own Moncada four years ago, when he posted pictures with his girlfriend pressing the throttle of a Mercedes Benz, “one of the toys I had at home.” After a boxing of ears, he offered apologies publicly, although behind his words he seemed to say: Condemn me, it doesn’t matter, Instagram will absolve me. Curiously, the same people who now want to burn him at the stake of the Fidelist inquisition go in procession to the center that treasures the relics of the Commander, to venerate the armored Mercedes Benz model 500 SEL that “the first of his name” used for two decades to drive through his estates.
Sandro is the broken mirror of a political project that swore to create the “New Man” and has ended up generating an influencer who mocks the Electric Union with the Yankee flag at his back. He owns a bar, never strays from a cold Cristal beer and is a fan of vampires. Perhaps it was Sandro who enlightened the official Alexis Triana to get in Spain a copy in good condition of the film Vampires in Havana. Before the media grandson made reference to a film that the Cuban Institute of Art and Film Industry had not been able to preserve, the skilled squire Triana stepped forward.
“Ah, but look at Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, so discreet, so intelligent, so committed”
To prove that he does not have a genetic defect, the ultra-fidelistas compare Sandro to one of his cousins. They say: “Ah, but look at Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, so discreet, so intelligent, so committed”. Smirnov is the son of a Russian woman with Fidel Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart — Fidelito, the second of his name — who threw himself from a fifth floor window in 2018. Smirnov, unlike Sandro, was trained outside Cuba. His passion is not for Cristal; it is for cigars. He is not attracted to vampires but to parachuting. His partner is not an instagrammer, she is a presenter of the television program Cuadrando la caja: Marxlenin Pérez. What conservatives like about him is his silence.
The anger of the “loyalists” has exploded because Sandro disassembles all their rhetoric and represents what they will never be. El Necio and Limia may become mere propagandists, perhaps with minor privileges, perhaps with the possibility of reaching some position within the nomenclature. But they will never be untouchable. They belong to a lower caste, like Carlos Lage, Felipe Pérez Roque and Alejandro Gil. They will taste the honey of power as long as they are useful, and if the power in the shadows decides to discard them, it will do so without a blink of an eye.
Limia did not say “I can’t speak out of turn” when Raul’s grandson-bodyguard ran over a 19-year-old girl with impunity
Attacking Sandro seems easy. Comparing him with Smirnov too. The one the Taliban will never mention is Raúl Castro’s favorite grandson: El Cangrejo (The Crab). Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro – son of Débora Castro Espín and the late López-Calleja – makes Sandro look like a commoner.
Limia did not say “I can’t speak out of turn” when Raúl’s grandson-bodyguard ran over a 19-year-old girl and her young son with impunity on April 23, 2022. He will never dare to question his videos shot on luxury yachts singing “I’m a Playboy model.” El Necio – whose nickname fits perfectly with his scarce talent – will never dedicate a measly criticism against the most powerful dauphin of Cuban royalty. Opportunists always know where it says “danger.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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