Jon Lee Anderson

He's 94.

He was the country's defense minister for over 50 years, and then he succeeded his brother in power for 10.

Díaz-Canal, the current president, is this sort of, you know, loyal party apparatchik who has served

one and a half terms in office as his sort of handpicked successor.

He won re-election and he has two more years to serve.

But he still defers to Raul Castro, who is still by all appearances quite lucid, as his boss.

And then you have some Castro family relatives within the mix.

who are key figures.

One of them is his grandson, who people call Raulito, and he is 41.

He's a lieutenant colonel in the interior ministry who has been his father's bodyguard since he was in his 20s.

He's regarded as the apple of his grandfather's eye, and we have learned through the grapevine that he was in meetings with Rubio and Rubio's entourage over the past month or so

in other countries in the region, St.

Kitts being the last one, the Caribbean island, possibly elsewhere.

Now, another Castro relative is Alejandro Castro Espín, who is Raúl Castro's son, only son, who is himself an officer, now a general in the interior ministry.

At one point, he ran the country's counterintelligence services.

He's been in a sort of

Retirement, nobody really knows much about what he does nowadays in the last few years.

But it's key to remember that Alejandro, 12 years ago, when the Obama administration wanted to initiate secret conversations with then-President Raul Castro about opening up relations between the two countries, it was with Alejandro that Ben Rhodes, then Ben Rhodes, and Ricardo Zúñiga met.

a senior NSC official, had these conversations and met in various countries, Canada, Trinidad, for over a year secretly before the announcement was made that a breakthrough had been achieved.

It looks like it will be a combination, frankly.