Cuba turned the page, after more than six decades with the Castro brothers in power. Raúl Castro, 89, retired on Monday, but will remain present in the country’s strategic decisions, in a symbolic transition that keeps the party system unique.
“The nation’s strategic decisions must be consulted with Army General Raul Castro Ruz,” said President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 60, elected first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP), the highest country charge.
“The army general will continue to be present because he is a reference for any Cuban communist and revolutionary,” added Diaz-Canel, the island’s first civilian leader, in his message at the close of the eighth congress of the ‘PCC which has been held since Friday.
Castro will offer his “guidance and alertness to any mistake or deficiency, ready to face imperialism as the first with his rifle,” he added.
The relief comes amid a deep economic crisis over the coronavirus pandemic and the strengthening of the embargo that the United States has maintained against the island for 60 years.
So far the majority of the 11.2 million inhabitants have only met Fidel and Raúl Castro at the helm of power.
“I’ve known only one party since I was born and so far we live with it, and no one starves to death,” says Miguel Gainza, a 58-year-old artisan who works in Old Havana and supports this political system. .
Cuba is one of five countries in the world that maintains the Communist Party as the only one, along with China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.
– “Managing a country” –
A total of 300 delegates from across the island gathered in Havana in an area with access closed by police.
While among Cubans there is fatigue due to scarcity and long queues for supplies, in this country it matters 80% of what it consumes.
Delegates voted on Sunday to elect the 114-member Central Committee, which appointed the Politburo to power in Cuba. This select group consisted of three women and 11 men, with a mean age of 61.6 years.
Castro’s departure is accompanied by the retirement of other militants who won the revolution in 1959 such as the second secretary, José Ramón Machado Ventura, 90, and Ramiro Valdés, 88.
Frustrated by a lack of opportunities, young people, who often seek to leave the country, are increasingly expressing their frustration on social media, following the arrival in 2018 of the mobile internet.
The government, harassed over the past four years by tougher sanctions from Washington, continues to have ideological fighting among its priorities.
“It is good to warn the mercenary lumpen who profit from the destiny of all, to those who ask for invasion already, to those who continually offend in word and in fact to those who do not rest, that the patience of this people has limits,” said Diaz- Canel, in his message before the congress behind closed doors, the fragments were transmitted in deferred by state means.
At the inauguration of the congress on Friday, Raúl Castro called for “zealous” care for the unity of the Communist Party and “never accept division” under “false pretexts of more democracy.”
The only party in Cuba “will always be in the focus of the enemy’s campaigns,” he said.
– “Cuba more connected” –
At the pizzeria where he works with background rap, Luis Enrique Oramas, 30, says that “if they let people comment on what they think, it would be like elsewhere, (there would be) two and even three games.”
“Faced with the immobility of the (Joe) Biden administration, which has left intact the policy of (Donald) Trump and the challenge of a more connected and transnationalized Cuba, Cuban elites choose to make pineapple” and postpone “any internal debate, “Artur López Levy, a professor of international relations at Holy Names University, told AFP.
Activists, artists and intellectuals maintain intense networking activity, in a country where demonstrations are almost non-existent.
While the PCC congress was being held, about twenty of them reported being prevented by the police from leaving their homes, according to a tweet published on Saturday by the Moviment Sant Isidre protester.
They also said they had been incommunicado with internet outages at their homes.
“What are attendees at the # 8voCongresoPCC afraid of? Let them ruin the simulation party,” Erika Guevara-Roses, Amnesty International’s director for the Americas, said on Twitter.
“While they pat themselves on the back to maintain their authoritarian regime,” he added.
During the congress, the party adopted a resolution to confront political and ideological “subversion”.