One of Cuba's most powerful men, General Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja, dies at 62

General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, executive president of the business and military conglomerate GAESA, died on July 1 in Cuba due to cardiac arrest, according to official sources.

Rodríguez López-Calleja, 62, was one of the most powerful men within the elite of the communist regime.

According to the Granma newspaper, "General Luis Alberto, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party and deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power, has a brilliant record of service to the Homeland and the Cuban Revolution."

Rodríguez López-Calleja is the son of Major General Guillermo Rodríguez del Pozo, head of the FAR's Medical Services and of the National General Staff of the Civil Defense. He married Déborah Castro Espín, Raúl Castro's firstborn, with whom he had two children.

His mother is Cristina López-Calleja Hiort-Lorenzen, Ph.D. in Economic Sciences at the Center for International Migration Studies of the University of Havana. She was appointed by the late dictator Fidel Castro to head the research team on Cuban migration.

The Major General was born on January 19, 1960, in Santa Clara municipality, Villa Clara province.

He completed his higher education in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) with a Gold degree. He was a member of the Young Communist League (UJC).

At the end of his university studies, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Trade. He was called to Active Military Service in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), where he served as a liaison between the Minister of the FAR and the Directorate of Economic Collaboration of the same organization. In 1990 he joined the Military Counterintelligence and served a mission in Angola.

In 1996, he was appointed to direct the Business System administered by the Business Administration Group (GAESA), which controls the Island's economy.

In October 2011, he was appointed president of the Cuban Institute for the Coordination of Collaboration and Investments with the Republic of Angola.

He has been a member of the Party's Central Committee since 2011 and of its Political Bureau since 2021, as well as an advisor to Cuban ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel.

In 2020, the U.S. government included López-Calleja on its list of individuals sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department (SDN). As a result, his assets in U.S. jurisdiction were frozen, and he was prohibited from entering the country.

The Cuban regime made him more and more visible in recent years, and on October 23, 2021, he was appointed deputy of the municipality of Remedios, Villa Clara province.

That day he appeared at a public event in Remedios, where he gave a speech and received flowers from supporters of the regime.

"I will make the greatest efforts to justify and live up to the great honor of representing the municipality of Remedios in the National Assembly of People's Power," he said at the time.