Havana.- With energetic applause, and amidst cheers from military personnel, former Cuban president Raúl Castro (2008-2018) reappeared at an event for the 65th anniversary of the Personal Security Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior, according to a report shown on the state television news.
During this media return, Castro was accompanied by the government leadership, with President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro -an interlocutor in the negotiations with Washington- at the head.
The presence of the leader of the revolution at the event silences the rumors that circulated last week -in foreign media and social networks- which speculated about a hospitalization due to a stroke and even his death.
Raúl Castro, together with his brother Fidel Castro (1926-2016), participated in the 1961 founding of the Personal Security Directorate, whose function consists of physically protecting the main Cuban leaders.
Among the activities of the event, the reading by the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, of a letter written by Raúl Castro stood out, in which he recognized the work of the body and highlighted the 32 Cubans who died on January 3rd while trying to protect the former president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
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“The Revolution is living through difficult days under the hostility of the United States government, which remains determined to make Cuba’s example disappear from the world,” said a fragment of the letter, in reference to the complex economic crisis the island is going through, aggravated since January following the oil blockade and sanctions by Washington.
Furthermore, Castro was formally charged in the United States on May 20 for the 1996 downing of two light aircraft belonging to a Cuban exile organization—and the death of their four crew members—; Washington has stated that it wants to bring him to trial, which has raised the specter of them carrying out an arrest against him like that of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
However, there are also bilateral conversations between both countries, in which his grandson Rodríguez Castro participates.
These negotiations have once again placed the former president explicitly at the center of the political board, despite having formally left the leadership of the country in 2018 and that of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal one) in 2021.
That distance from the political scene, added to his 95 years of age, periodically amplifies rumors about his state of health, especially when his public appearances are not so frequent.
