Carlos Rafael Rodriguez

Born 1914 in Cienfuegos. Cuban state and public figure. Doctor of law and social sciences.

Rodriguez graduated from the University of Havana in 1939. He began participating in the revolutionary movement while still a student and in 1936 joined the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC), which in 1944 became the People’s Socialist Party of Cuba (PSPC). He was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1939 and from 1953 to 1961 was a member of the Executive Bureau of the Central Committee of the PSPC.

Between 1959 and 1962, Rodriguez was director of the central organ of the PSPC, the newspaper Noticias de Hoy. He played an active role in the preparation of the most important legislation of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba. From 1960 to 1962 he was director of the School of Economics of the University of Havana; he was a professor there at the same time. He was president of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform between 1962 and 1965. From 1961 to 1965, Rodriguez was in the National Directorate of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations and then of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba. He became a member of the Central Committee and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1965 and chairman of the Cuban part of the Soviet-Cuban Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific, and Technical Cooperation in 1970. In 1972 he was made permanent representative of the Republic of Cuba to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). In November 1972 he became a deputy prime minister.

Rodriguez’ research has been concerned chiefly with economic history, the economics of agriculture, agrarian relations, problems of the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and the economic, scientific, and technical cooperation of socialist countries.