The nation’s Communist Party hierarchy on Monday chosen Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to the highly effective place of First Secretary, changing Raul Castro after he introduced his retirement final week.
As head of state and leader of the solely political occasion permitted by legislation on the island, Diaz-Canel should chart the course ahead for the Cuban revolution, now that the guerrilla comandantes who seized energy in 1959 have all died or aged.
“Comrade Raul will be consulted on the most important strategic decisions of greatest weight for the destiny of our nation. He will always be present,” Diaz-Canal mentioned of Castro, as he accepted the new place.
Born in 1960, the similar 12 months the Castro household nationalized all US-owned property in Cuba, Diaz-Canel exudes neither Fidel’s charisma nor Raul’s authority. While he did a three-year stint in the military, in contrast to the Castros, Diaz-Canel is a pencil-pushing bureaucrat somewhat than an olive-green-uniformed revolutionary. That mentioned, he’ll make historical past as the first Cuban at the helm of the authorities and communist occasion not named Castro.
And understanding easy methods to navigate Cuba’s dysfunctional paperwork might show to be a extra very important ability than commanding a battalion as even many of Raul Castro’s signature proposals—remaking the port of Mariel into a producing hub and unifying Cuba’s two currencies—grew to become ensnared in the lavatory of crimson tape that appears to plague each endeavor pursued by the Cuban authorities.
The new Cuban leader has made climbing the ranks in the communist-run system his life work, whereas having fun with Raul Castro’s enduring full-throated help.
“Diaz-Canel is not the fruit of improvisation but a thought-out selection of a young revolutionary with the conditions to be promoted to superior offices,” Castro mentioned in his speech on Friday at the Communist Party Congress, which was convened to pick out the growing older revolutionary’s substitute.
The Castro legacy
Since taking up the Cuban presidency in 2018, Diaz-Canel has put ahead the picture of a youthful, extra dynamic leader‚ one who posts messages on social media and reads from a pill at authorities conferences. His insurance policies, nonetheless, have been as conservative if no more so than Raul Castro’s. It’s a method bent on assuring the elder technology nonetheless occupying key political positions that he won’t undermine their revolution.
He will want that political backing to deal with widespread discontent over a slumping financial system, elevated US sanctions and more and more tech-savvy anti-government dissident teams.
Addressing opposition activists who he known as “mercenary lumpen,” Diaz-Called warned that “the patience of the people has limits.”
Some critics of the Cuban authorities say the transition is known as a smokescreen.
“The Castro regime is trying to fool the international community by saying, ‘Oh now the Castros are not in power anymore, now a new guy has the reins of the country and is really going to run the country in a different fashion. BS!” mentioned Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), a Cuban-American Congresswoman who gained her seat in 2020 promising harsher sanctions on Cuba.
“The Castros are still in power,” she mentioned.
Even if no members of their household maintain high management positions, there may be little doubt the Castros will proceed to wield nice affect so long as the communist-run authorities and highly effective army they constructed stays intact.
On Monday, General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, son-in-law to Raul Castro, who heads a sprawling army firm that controls state-owned lodges, marinas and infrastructure tasks, was for the first time named to the Politburo, the govt committee of the Cuban communist occasion.
A retirement years in the works
Raul Castro has mentioned for years his retirement was in the works.
Unlike his older brother Fidel, who was head of state for 49 years and deliberate to remain in workplace till he died, Raul Castro carried out measures to limit Cuban presidents to 2 five-year phrases and require them to be underneath age 60 at the begin of their first time period.
He will flip 90 in June, the similar age of his older brother and mentor Fidel Castro when he died in 2016.
After a thriller sickness pressured Fidel Castro from energy in 2008, he continued to put in writing articles and weigh in on present occasions. By distinction, Raul Castro is anticipated to maintain a low profile in retirement.
Since stepping down from the presidency in 2018, Raul Castro has made few public appearances. During these with Miguel Diaz-Canel, he lets his successor do the speaking.
He spends extra of his time in a big well-guarded home, in what had been an upper-class neighborhood earlier than the Cuban revolution, in the jap metropolis of Santiago de Cuba, near the place Fidel Castro is buried.
When CNN visited Santiago in 2020, residents of the metropolis referred to the home as “punto cero” or “point zero,” the similar nickname given to the head of state’s residence, the place Fidel Castro lived his ultimate years in Havana.
While funeral plans for Fidel Castro have been, earlier than his loss of life, a state secret, Raul Castro has already erected a tomb in his identify beside the grave of his spouse Vilma Espín, a fellow guerrilla fighter who died in 2007, in a pantheon to the revolutionaries who fought alongside them.
Raul Castro, not often giving prolonged speeches his brother as soon as did, gave an uncharacteristically lengthy speech on Friday that lasted greater than two hours.
“I will continue soldiering on as one more revolutionary combatant, ” he mentioned. “Ready to make my modest contribution until the end of my life.”
