As pundits worldwide proclaimed the end of the Castro era last week, new Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel promptly dismissed such a notion.
“[Former Cuban president] Raul Castro will lead the decisions of greatest transcendence for the present and the future of this country,” Diaz-Canel said in a speech marking the official changing of the guard on Thursday.
After a 12-year run, 86-year-old Castro stepped down as president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, but he is not leaving the seat of power: He is to remain the head of Cuba’s two most powerful institutions — the armed forces and the Communist Party.
Think of it as a chess move: From center stage to backstage — always Castro’s comfort zone — from where he will vigilantly watch the proceedings.
Unlike his brother Fidel Castro, the former Cuban president who craved the world stage, Raul Castro was always a reluctant leading man. However, as the founder and head of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, Raul Castro’s power was never in doubt.
Despite a natural allergy to the limelight, Raul Castro reigned as Cuba’s coruler for a half-century. The brothers knew each other’s talents and limitations — together they were the most successful political brother act in history.
Affable and deferential, Diaz-Canel formerly served as Raul Castro’s bodyguard, cementing a trusted relationship with both brothers. A former minister of higher education who diligently ascended through the party ranks, he favors casual dress and bicycling, and has supported gay rights.
More importantly, he is not a showboater and evinces zero personal ambition — thus avoiding the kiss of death for several previous would-be Castro successors.
Diaz-Canel defines himself as a “Raulista” economic reformer, meaning he would continue loosening the state’s stranglehold on private enterprise — but slowly and cautiously. That might not be enough.
Raul Castro aspired to be Cuba’s version of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平). Despite his brother’s resistance, he revamped the country’s bankrupt communist model by tweaking it into a version of market socialism with limited private enterprise.
However, he was never able to haul Cuba out of the red, despite billions in debt forgiveness. The country remains mired in a two-tier currency system that is deeply unpopular.
Since 1959, Cuba’s economic model — with its relatively generous health and education benefits — has depended upon having a patron.
For decades, the Soviet Union picked up the country’s tab; former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was even more obliging.
However, after Chavez’s death and amid Venezuela’s spiraling collapse into a failed state, the economic pipeline has been reduced to a drip, and Cuba remains knee-deep in debt.
Diaz-Canel would probably find the seat of power a bit crowded.
Although Fidel Castro once said “Cuba is not a dynasty,” the evidence suggests otherwise.
Raul Castro has long served as the family patriarch and the family remains his most innermost circle.
The decisive power players in Cuba are to remain Raul Castro’s only son, 52-year-old Colonel Alejandro Castro Espin, who heads intelligence and domestic security for the army and Cuban Ministry of the Interior; and Raul Castro’s son-in-law, General Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, married to, although long separated from, Raul Castro’s eldest child, Deborah.
Clearly being groomed for the future, Alejandro Castro has been at his father’s side during all significant meetings with foreign leaders, and served as the lead negotiator ahead of Cuba’s rapprochement with the US.
As the long-time leader of GAESA, the economic behemoth of the army that controls the country’s major business interests and investments, Rodriguez functions as Cuba’s chief executive.
Close by is Rodriguez’s 32-year-old son, Raulito, who has served as his grandfather’s bodyguard.
Another daughter of Raul Castro, outspoken 55-year-old Mariela Castro Espin, is a member of the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power who has promoted LGBT rights.
However, unlike her brother, she is not a key political player.
None of Fidel Castro’s sons are personally invested in politics, even less so after the suicide of the eldest, Fidelito, earlier this year.
For younger Cubans, Diaz-Canel gets points for being younger than 60, for championing access — albeit censored — to the Internet and for being an ally to Mariela Castro’s LGBT campaign.
However, no one expects Diaz-Canel to improve the nation’s human rights record, and Organization of American States Secretary-General Luis Almagro last week blasted Cuba as “an infamous dictatorship.”
Then there is the perennial thorny problem of its superpower northern neighbor: US President Donald Trump has remained unremittingly hostile, and partially reversed former US president Barack Obama’s historic detente with the island.
Once again, as during the Cold War, the US embassy is down to a skeleton crew, in retribution for the so-called “sonic attacks” on embassy personnel — never mind that the cause and perpetrators of which have yet to be definitively determined.
There have been several historic changes in Cuba over the past few years, including Obama’s rapprochement and the end of the “wet foot, dry foot” immigration policy, which rewarded citizenship to any Cuban who appeared on US shores.
Some might have thought Raul Castro’s retirement as president was another such a game changer, but with the army and party still firmly under his wing, it is not — at least for now.
US reporter and author Ann Louise Bardach is a veteran Cuba analyst
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