The country’s communist hierarchy on Monday elected Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to the powerful post of First Secretary, replacing Raul Castro after announcing his resignation last week.
As head of state and leader of the only political party allowed by law on the island, Diaz-Canel must set the course forward for the Cuban revolution, now that the guerrilla commanders who took power in 1959 have all died or are getting older. .
“Comrade Raul will be consulted on the most important strategic decisions of the greatest weight for the fate of our country. He will always be present,” Diaz-Canal said of Castro when accepting the new post.
Diaz-Canel, born in 1960, the same year that the Castro family nationalized all U.S. property in Cuba, does not radiate Fidel’s charisma or Raul’s authority. While doing a period of three years in the military, unlike the Castros, Diaz-Canel is a bureaucrat who pushes with a pencil, rather than a revolution with an olive green uniform. That said, he would make history as the first Cuban at the helm of the government and communist party not named Castro.
And knowing how to navigate Cuba’s dysfunctional bureaucracy can be a more important skill than commanding a battalion, because even many of Raul Castro’s signature proposals, which rebuild Mariel’s port into a manufacturing center and the two currencies of Cuba united, became entangled in the bog of red tape that apparently plagues every effort pursued by the Cuban government.
The new Cuban leader allowed his life’s work to climb into the communist system while enjoying Raul Castro’s continued support.
“Diaz-Canel is not the fruit of improvisation, but a thoughtful choice of a young revolutionary with the conditions to be promoted to higher offices,” Castro said in his speech at the Congress of the Communist Party on Friday, which convened is to replace the aging revolutionary.
The legacy of Castro
Since taking over the Cuban presidency in 2018, Diaz-Canel has portrayed the image of a younger, more dynamic leader, one who posts messages on social media and reads on a tablet at government meetings. However, his policies were just as conservative if not more so as Raul Castro’s. It is a strategy aimed at ensuring that the older generation continues to hold important political positions so that it will not undermine their revolution.
He will need the political support to address widespread discontent over a weakening economy, increased U.S. sanctions and increasingly technologically intelligent anti-government dissident groups.
Diaz-Called addresses opposition activists he “lumps mercenary” and warns that “the patience of the people has limits”.
Some critics of the Cuban government say the transition is a smokescreen.
“The Castro regime is trying to fool the international community by saying, ‘Oh, now the Castros are no longer in power, now a new guy has taken the reins of the country and is really going to run the country in a different way. BS! “Says Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), a Cuban-American congresswoman who won her seat in 2020 and promised strict sanctions against Cuba.
“The Castros are still in power,” she said.
Even if no members of their family hold the best leadership positions, there is little doubt that the Castros will continue to exert great influence as long as the communist government and the powerful army they have built remain intact.
On Monday, General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, son-in-law of Raul Castro, who heads a sprawling military enterprise that manages hotels, marinas and infrastructure projects, is named to the Politburo, the executive branch, for the first time. committee of the Cuban Communist Party.
A retirement year in progress
Raul Castro said for years his retirement was underway.
Unlike his older brother Fidel, who was head of state for 49 years and intended to remain in office until his death, Raul Castro introduced measures to limit the Cuban presidents to two terms of five years and at the beginning of the year to be under the age of 60. their first term.
He turns 90 in June, the same age as his older brother and mentor Fidel Castro when he passed away in 2016.
After being forced by a mysterious illness in 2008, Fidel Castro went on to write articles and inform current events. Raul Castro, on the other hand, is expected to have a low profile at retirement.
Since stepping down from the presidency in 2018, Raul Castro has made few public appearances. During the conversations with Miguel Diaz-Canel, he lets his successor speak.
He spends more of his time in a large, well-guarded house, which was a upper-class neighborhood before the Cuban revolution, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, near the place where Fidel Castro was buried.
When CNN visited Santiago in 2020, residents of the city referred to the house as ‘punto cero’ or ‘point zero’, the same nickname given to the head of state’s residence, where Fidel Castro lived his last years in Havana.
While funeral plans for Fidel Castro were a state secret before his death, Raul Castro had already erected a tomb in his name next to the tomb of his wife Vilma Espín, a fellow guerrilla fighter who died in 2007, in a pantheon. for the revolutionary. who fought alongside them.
Raul Castro, who rarely gave long speeches that his brother once gave, gave an unusually long speech on Friday that lasted more than two hours.
“I will continue to maintain myself as another revolutionary fighter,” he said. “Ready to make my humble contribution to the end of my life.”