Fidel Castro was Cuba's first communist oligarch, but not the last. The new ones continue to defend the old tyrant's legacy.

“The difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream.” - Reinaldo Arenas, 1980 

La vida de millonarios de la cúpula Castro Canel mientras piden resistencia al pueblo de Cuba. pic.twitter.com/thhqLAFMkX

— Mayra Domínguez🇨🇺🇺🇸 (@MayraDo57466678) February 18, 2023

This video has gone viral over social media highlighting members of the Castro clan that live a life of luxury in Cuba amidst the great poverty of the vast majority of Cubans.  The dictatorship has passed a new penal code that lengthens prison sentences for Cubans who complain about it.  A Tweet sharing the video states in Spanish: "The life of millionaires from the Castro Canel leadership while they ask for resistance from the people of Cuba."

This is not a new phenomenon, but one that was well hidden for decades. 

According to Forbes magazine and other publications, Castro enjoyed absolute privacy on his island.

The first oligarch in Communist Cuba was Fidel Castro. The late Cuban dictator owned a private island, 20 mansions, yachts, and according to Forbes Magazine was worth $900 million.  In 2014 upon the release of La Vie Cachée de Fidel Castro (Fidel Castro's Hidden Life) by the Cuban dictator's former bodyguard Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, The Guardian published an article on May 20th that dispelled myths about the communist leader.

Fidel Castro lived like a king with his own private yacht, a luxury Caribbean island getaway complete with dolphins and a turtle farm, and travelled with two personal blood donors, a new book claims. In La Vie Cachée de Fidel Castro (Fidel Castro's Hidden Life), former bodyguard Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, a member of Castro's elite inner circle, says the Cuban leader ran the country as his personal fiefdom like a cross between a medieval overlord and Louis XV. Sánchez, who was part of Castro's praetorian guard for 17 years, describes a charismatic and intelligent but manipulative, cold-blooded, egocentric Castro prone to foot-stamping temper tantrums. He claims the vast majority of Cubans were unaware their leader enjoyed a lifestyle beyond the dreams of many Cubans and at odds with the sacrifices he demanded of them. "Contrary to what he has always said, Fidel has never renounced capitalist comforts or chosen to live in austerity. Au contraire, his mode de vie is that of a capitalist without any kind of limit," he writes. "He has never considered that he is obliged by his speech to follow the austere lifestyle of a good revolutionary."

Videos and photos would emerge over the years revealing the Castro family's life of luxury while most Cubans lived in misery and extreme poverty, but the hypocrisy began with Fidel Castro.

This is one of the 20 mansions attributed to the late Cuban dictator.

This life of luxury was paid for initially out of what was looted from Cuban capitalists, farmers, and the middle class, then through Soviet subsidies, drug trafficking, and loans provided by Western countries and businesses. The Castro regime defaulted on the loans, and today is considered a poor credit risk, and a deadbeat. This leads to a question that will be decided in a UK court in the next few months: "Can the Cuban government be sued for unpaid debts from the early 1980s?"

"The trial ended last week, but it could be months before the judge, Sara Cockerill, renders judgement in the case of CRF vs Banco Nacional de Cuba & Cuba. Her decision is central to whether Cuba may finally be forced to pay back billions of dollars in unpaid debts. The trial is seen as a test case. CRF1, formerly known as the Cuba Recovery Fund, owns more than $1 billion in face value of European bank loans extended to Cuba in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Fidel Castro still ruled the island. Cuba defaulted on the debt in 1986."

Middle class Europeans and Canadian taxpayers are subsidizing the life-styles of the elite of the Castro military dictatorship.

Daniel I Pedreira, an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, in a 2013 paper presented at the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) made the case in 2013 that the Cuban government was already engaged in the establishment of an oligarchy. The formal and institutionalized military-economic oligarchy began to be planned out by Raul Castro prior to the Special Period.

"For decades, the Cuban government has developed the framework for an oligarchy comprised of military leaders. Dr. Terry L. Maris (2009:64) asserts: Even prior to the “special period,” Cuba had begun to explore new ways to improve its economy. Raúl Castro, in his role as the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (F.A.R.), designed and implemented a novel education and training program. Under the direction of Raúl’s close friend, General Julio Casas Regueiro, high-ranking officers were carefully selected to attend some of the most prominent business schools in Western Europe to acquire the skills deemed necessary for the salvation of the Cuban economy. In apparent contradiction of the tenets of socialism, the Cuban military quietly embraced the teachings of capitalism."

The establishment of the so-called "Centre for Economic Transformation" by the Castro regime with Russian oligarchs confirms that there will be no transition to a free market, but rather a formalization of the informal and previously existing kleptocracy run by the Cuban military through its conglomerate GAESA, with a greater role for Moscow in the evolution of this model. At the same time one cannot ignore the presence of Beijing in Cuba, and its links to the Cuban dictatorship, and its oligarchs. In November 2022, Beijing announced that it would restructure its debts with Havana, provide new credits, and donate $100 million to the Castro regime.

Oligarchies exist the world over, but the Cuban case, like the Russian, are extreme examples that also entrench political power into a permanent dictatorship. They are also infiltrated into the United States, and Europe where they can corrupt and undermine Western Democracies.

Rodolfo Dávalos León w/ Lopez Callejas,  Bruno Rodriguez, and Diaz-Canel

Rodolfo Dávalos León is a Cuban national living in the United States who founded Caribbean Ventures Management LLC, a company incorporated in the state of Delaware in 2016, but headquartered in Coral Gables, Miami.  When protests erupted across Cuba on July 11, 2021, and the dictatorship's future was in doubt, Mr. Dávalos León tweeted out "If the revolution falls you will find me in Cuba, with my father, knee on ground, rifle in hand, defending the work of Fidel. Long live Cuba, long live Raul, and long live Fidel!" 

Naturally, a few questions will arise. Has the FBI investigated what he is doing? In addition, who is his father? Has he registered as an agent of a foreign principal?

According to publicly available photos, he met with Ben Rhodes in Coral Gables and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy in the U.S. Capitol.

His father is a highly placed confidant of Fidel and Raul Castro. According to official records, Dr. Rodolfo Dávalos Fernández is a professor of International Law at the University of Havana and president of the Cuban Court of International Commercial Arbitration.

Dr. Rodolfo Dávalos Fernández with Fidel Castro. His daughter pictured on the right.

Cuban independent journalist Ulises Fernández in a July 2021 piece for Cubanet filled in some of the gaps in the professor's official record. Dr. Dávalos Fernández was present in  "every international litigation that involved the Cuban government as defendant, plaintiff, summoned party, or even referenced entity, in matters unpleasant in nature, since they always have to do with breach of contracts, frozen bank accounts, confiscations, accumulated debts, fraudulent practices against businessmen, blackmail, espionage and psychological manipulation..."

It is not mentioned that Professor Dávalos Fernández is one of the patriarchs of the Cuban oligarchy, with his children enjoying lucrative lifestyles in private companies in the United States and Spain.  

Dr. Rodolfo Dávalos Fernández, Cuban oligarch

Rodolfo Dávalos León, who is based in Coral Gables, has already been mentioned. Let us now turn our attention to his sister, Lourdes Dávalos León, an attorney based in Spain and a social influencer with a penchant for Louis Vuitton handbags and the finer things in life. Video emerged highlighting their visit to the United Kingdom in 2023. She now wants to open a shop in Cuba, and is described as an entrepreneur.

If the Biden Administration believes that these "entrepreneurs" will be agents of a democratic transition in Cuba, it is delusory. More likely, they will be agents of corruption in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, seeking to undermine the rule of law and democracy, as their Russian counterparts are doing.