Background
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was born on 23 May 1913 in Cienfuegos.
government official politician
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was born on 23 May 1913 in Cienfuegos.
Rodriguez received his doctorate in economics from the University of Havana in 1939.
He held appointments as mayor of Cienfuegos during the Revolution of 1933 and as a member of the national Civil Service Commission from 1934 until 1944. He joined the old Communist Party in 1932 and became a member of the Central Committee of the reorganized Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) in 1939. In 1944 he was appointed to Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar’s cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio. Rodriguez was the only person to serve in both Batista’s and Castro’s cabinets.
From 1959 to 1962 he served as editor of the Communist daily paper. Hoy, from 1962 until 1965, he was president of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform; and when Castro created the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas in 1961, as the regime’s single party, he was given a major role over economic matters in the new organization. In 1965 he became a member of the Secretariat of the newly created Partido Comunista dc Cuba (PCC).
During the late 1960s Rodriguez fell from favor with Fidel Castro but made a strong comeback in the early 1970s, when he directed a regulatory commission overseeing Cuban-Soviet economic, technical, and scientific exchanges. He was appointed to the Politburo in 1975 and to the Council of State in 1976. Thereafter, he played a vital role in the development of foreign policy and management of the economy.
As one of the dominant leaders of the PSP, Rodriguez visited Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra in July 1957, where he signed a mutual aid pact with the 26th of July Movement. Opposed by many PSP members, this agreement led to Communist support of both the clandestine struggle and the guerrillas in the mountains.
Rodriguez made the transition to the Castro era with relative ease.
