Raúl Castro appears at public event in Cuba after health rumors

Raúl Castro returned to public view amid applause and military cheers, appearing at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of Cuba’s Interior Ministry Personal Security Directorate. Cuban state television showed the former president at the event alongside President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who takes part in negotiations with Washington.

The appearance quieted rumors circulated the previous week in foreign media and on social networks. Those reports had speculated that Castro had been hospitalized after a stroke, and some even suggested that he had died.

The event also carried personal and political symbolism. Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel helped establish the security directorate in 1961. During the ceremony, Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas read a letter from Raúl Castro praising the agency’s work and honoring 32 Cubans who died on Jan. 3 while trying to protect former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

In the letter, Castro said, “The Revolution is living through difficult days under the hostility of the United States government, which continues determined to make Cuba’s example disappear from the world.” The passage referred to Cuba’s economic crisis, which the article says worsened after Washington imposed an oil blockade and sanctions in January.

The former leader was formally charged in the United States on May 20 over the 1996 shooting down of two aircraft belonging to a Cuban exile organization, which killed all four people aboard. Washington says it wants to bring him before a court. At the same time, bilateral talks involving his grandson have placed Castro back at the center of political attention, despite his leaving the country’s leadership in 2018 and the Communist Party leadership in 2021. His age, 95, and infrequent public appearances continue to fuel speculation about his health.

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The Revolution is living through difficult days under the hostility of the United States government, which continues determined to make Cuba’s example disappear from the world.