The Castro on Instagram Who Bumps, Grinds and Takes Trump on a Cuban Joyride
Sandro Castro has drawn scrutiny for his Instagram posts in which he flaunts a life of luxury while using satire to point out the very deterioration his family’s leadership helped create.
March 21, 2026
The Castro family has controlled Cuba tightly for nearly 70 years, their personal lives shrouded in secrecy.
But now one of them is an influencer on Instagram.
Sandro Castro, 33, is a grandson of Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s Communist revolution. With some 152,000 followers on Instagram, the Havana-based Mr. Castro sports a stylish haircut, a stubbly beard and a love of hip sunglasses. He is often quick to gyrate his body in provocative videos that garner thousands of clicks and likes.
But his skits also highlight something much more sensitive and contentious: how far Cuba has deteriorated under his family’s rule.
His subtle digs at the government’s inability to provide basic services for its people are a fraught topic in a country where Fidel Castro is idolized for his promises to build an egalitarian society.
But nearly 70 years later, the Communist revolution has led to poverty, empty bellies, an energy-starved island often plunged into darkness and a medical system — once the envy of Latin America — struggling to provide basic care.
In one video, Mr. Castro courts a grimy gas canister to spotlight the country’s fuel shortage and calls his country Apagonia, a word that plays off the Spanish term for blackout.
Some government defenders denounce Mr. Castro as an ideological traitor, while others criticize the depictions of his own life for showing how much better he has it than most Cubans. Some supporters urge him to call out his family as the cause of Cuba’s problems. (President Trump’s blockade of oil imports has deepened the country’s crisis).
“He’s become a flashpoint for these questions about Cuba’s future and social inequality,” said Michael J. Bustamante, chairman of Cuban studies at the University of Miami. “He’s not breaking with the system, but he’s definitely pushing the boundaries.”
Cuba watchers and Communist opponents and supporters alike scrutinize his every post, combing them over to see if he is offering any crumbs of insider knowledge he may have as a Castro.
In a recent video, he rejected a (fake) call from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue his domino game with friends, leading commenters to question whether he was foreshadowing something about Cuba’s ongoing talks with the United States.
On the day Cuba’s government acknowledged those talks, Mr. Castro posted a skit of an orange-faced President Trump knocking on his door. The U.S. president implores him to negotiate a deal with Washington, saying “I want to buy Cuba.”
Mr. Castro tells him he is crazy, then takes him on a tour of Cuba as Mr. Trump says he wants to build mansions on the Havana waterfront.
Mr. Castro did not respond to a request for comment.
He was born in 1991, the son of Alexis Castro del Valle — one of Fidel Castro’s five children. But unlike the Communist leader, Sandro Castro’s father became a photographer and a cameraman for television and documentaries, seeming to stay out of politics.
Sandro Castro also appears to have shied away from politics, apparently never holding a government or Communist Party position, Cuba academics and experts say. His cousin, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, is currently in talks with the United States over a political and economic transition for the island.
Critics often view Sandro Castro as the embodiment of his family’s elitism. In his videos, he flaunts beer, beautiful women, fashionable Nike clothing and a posh-looking home. Fidel Castro also didn’t always live the life of modesty he urged Cubans to follow and was famous for wearing two Rolex watches together.
“He is a window into the Castro family,” said Guennady Rodríguez, 44, a Cuban commentator in exile who has been critical of the Communist government on his YouTube channel. “These people have asked for the Cuban people to sacrifice a lot over the years. But Sandro is the exact opposite of what they have been preaching, with his lavish consumption.”
While many on the island nation struggle to find basics like milk for their babies, the bar that Mr. Castro owns in Havana, EFE, posts videos of the cocktails and the freshly baked pizzas it sells, topped with piles of ham. The bar serves gin and tonics for 1,000 pesos (just under $2 on the informal exchange rate) while a mojito is 700 pesos, according to its menu.
The average monthly salary in Cuba is just under 7,000 pesos, according to government data released in November.
Some of Mr. Castro’s videos are filmed in his bar, or across Cuba. In one, he dances with friends while spraying beer bottles into the air as he bounces to the chorus of Kendrick Lamar’s hit song “Not Like Us.” (The lyrics could not be more accurate for many struggling Cubans.)
His bar is in some ways a symbol of the quiet privatization that the Cuban government has allowed in recent years, which has created a two-tiered system of haves and have-nots. Those with one foot in the private sector or with family abroad to send them money can buy food or gas on the black market. Those without must wait in lines for government rations, often waiting hours only to be turned away.
But Mr. Castro’s Instagram account also points out many of the disparities the island nation faces, even if addressed in satirical formats.
While the Cuban government does tolerate some criticism, it has pushed out many critics openly calling for protests and political change, who now live in exile in places like Miami or Mexico. But so far, it seems, Mr. Castro has not been censored.
In one clip, he sexually strokes a nozzle at a gas station. “What is this? I’ve been at it for 24 hours and nothing is coming out,” he says in the video published last month amid widespread gas shortages.
“Another day here in Apagonia, with a huge thirst,” he says in another post, using an informal term given to Cuba to refer to the island’s widespread power outages. (A blackout in Spanish translates to “apagón.”)
Across the bar he spots what appears to be a gas canister, which he approaches. “There is not a moment when I cannot be without you,” he says, while proposing marriage as they spread out on a bed. “In fact, I thought I would never find you. I hope you never leave again.”
Mr. Castro’s followers have egged him on to call out his family directly, a punishable offense on the island that he has so far avoided.
Others say he has betrayed the revolution.
“Sandro Castro is an ideological enemy,” Pedro Jorge Velázquez, another influencer known as “El Necio” and a vocal defender of the Cuban government, said last year on social media. “It is a shame that no state security official has turned up at his home to summon him for questioning, because what Sandro is doing undermines the security of this country.”
Mr. Castro’s lifestyle has created tensions before.
In 2021, he posted an Instagram video showing him driving a Mercedes-Benz, mirroring the lavish lifestyles of Cuban exiles in Miami whose consumer behaviors the Castro family has long disparaged. The outrage from viewers forced him to issue an apologetic video.
“The purpose of this message is to offer my sincere apologies to Cubans both inside and outside Cuba,” he said. “The car in which I recorded the video belongs to an acquaintance of mine who lent it to me.”
Whether Mr. Castro is a cunning but subtle change agent remains to be seen. But he drew hundreds of commenters last month in a video in which he seemed to be asking for a “Cuba Libre.” Was he calling for a Cuba free from Communist rule, or simply ordering the famous cocktail of rum, coke, and lime?
In the clip, a bartender offers Mr. Castro a Cristal, Cuba’s national beer. “No,” he says, “what I want is a Cuba Libre, brother.”
The bartender replies that he doesn’t have Coca-Cola, a scarce product on the island because of the U.S. trade embargo. “Well, when you have Coca-Cola, let me know, because right now that is my favorite drink,” Mr. Castro replies.
He then exits the bar and says to the camera: “Better times are coming.”
Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent reporting on Latin America and is based in Mexico City.
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