Raúl Castro Appears in Public in Cuba Amid Health Rumors

Raúl Castro reappeared in public with forceful applause and military cheers, offering a visible response to recent rumors about his health. State television showed the former Cuban president at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the Interior Ministry’s Personal Security Directorate.

Castro attended alongside the government leadership, including President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. The younger Rodríguez Castro has taken part in negotiations with Washington, giving the former president’s family a role in the bilateral contacts between Cuba and the United States.

The ceremony also recalled Castro’s long connection to the security body. He and his brother Fidel Castro helped establish the directorate in 1961. Its role is to protect Cuba’s senior leaders. Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas read a letter from Raúl Castro that praised the organization’s work and honored 32 Cubans who died on Jan. 3 while trying to protect Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“The Revolution lives through difficult days under the hostility of the government of the United States, which remains determined to make Cuba’s example disappear from the world,” Castro wrote in the passage read at the event. The letter referred to the island’s economic crisis, which the article says worsened after Washington’s oil blockade and sanctions in January.

Castro, 95, formally left the country’s leadership in 2018 and stepped down as head of the Communist Party in 2021. Yet his role in the bilateral talks has placed him back at the center of political attention. His age and infrequent public appearances continue to fuel speculation about his health. The article also notes that U.S. authorities formally accused him on May 20 over the 1996 downing of two aircraft linked to a Cuban exile organization, an incident that killed all four people aboard.

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