() — A powerful Cuban general who had been married to one of former President Raúl Castro’s daughters died Friday of heart failure, Cuban state media reported.
General Luis López Calleja oversaw a sprawling Cuban military company that ran much of the island’s tourist industry. He was 62 years old, the state website Cubadebate reported.
In recent years, López Calleja had assumed new roles in the Central Committee and the National Assembly of the Communist Party. This led some Cuban analysts to assess that López Calleja was one of the island’s most powerful figures, as many officials who fought alongside the Castro brothers in the 1959 revolution have retired or died.
Although López Calleja was not well known to many Cubans, he was a powerful player behind the scenes and had a key role in managing Cuban military investments in hotels, restaurants and marinas.
“I feel deep pain in expressing my condolences and those of the people of #Cuba to the family and friends of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja. We have lost a revolutionary, a man who served the Homeland and the Revolution in all its trenches,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel tweeted this Friday.
In his official biography in Cuban state media, López Calleja was called “the main advisor” to Díaz-Canel.
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