The Illusion of Cuban Reform:
Castro Strikes Out
by José Azel
The 2006 succession from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl, programmed since the early days of the Cuban revolution, was efficient, effective, and seamless. The eighty-two-year-old Raúl, who recently announced that he will step down in 2018, is now orchestrating his own succession behind the scenes. But however the transition from the Castro era plays out, one outcome is off the table: that Raúl will emerge as a reformer to end the Communist era and inaugurate a new democratic and market-oriented Cuba.
How Cuban communism will finally meet its demise is yet to be known, but perhaps we will find parallels in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982 at age eighty. His successor, Yuri Andropov, took over at sixty-eight and died less than two years later. Andropov was in turn succeeded by the Konstantin Chernenko, who died a year later at the age of seventy-four. Chernenko was then succeeded by the fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev. It took the Soviets three leadership changes to get to a new generation with prospects for reform.
Cuba’s first vice president of the Council of State, the eighty-two-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura, was expected to be Raúl Castro’s pro forma successor. In February 2013, however, he was replaced in that post by Miguel Díaz-Canel, a factotum-like party apparatchik in his early fifties. The international media jumped on the appointment and concluded that Cuba’s Gorbachev had arrived on the scene. But while Díaz-Canel is in line to succeed Raúl in the Council of State, this is not equivalent to being number two in the regime.
General Raúl Castro leads Cuba not because he is president of the Council of State, but because he is first secretary of the Communist Party, head of the armed forces, and Fidel’s brother. Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution makes it clear that the Communist Party is “the superior leading force of the society and the State.” It is the eighty-two-year-old Machado who remains second secretary of the fifteen-member Politburo of the Communist Party—and thus, at least for now, Raúl Castro’s heir apparent. Under Cuba’s governing succession protocol, the military-dominated Politburo is the cabal that will recommend, when the time comes, the country’s next leader.
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Read more: www.worldaffairsjournal.org
How Cuban communism will finally meet its demise is yet to be known, but perhaps we will find parallels in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982 at age eighty. His successor, Yuri Andropov, took over at sixty-eight and died less than two years later. Andropov was in turn succeeded by the Konstantin Chernenko, who died a year later at the age of seventy-four. Chernenko was then succeeded by the fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev. It took the Soviets three leadership changes to get to a new generation with prospects for reform.
Cuba’s first vice president of the Council of State, the eighty-two-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura, was expected to be Raúl Castro’s pro forma successor. In February 2013, however, he was replaced in that post by Miguel Díaz-Canel, a factotum-like party apparatchik in his early fifties. The international media jumped on the appointment and concluded that Cuba’s Gorbachev had arrived on the scene. But while Díaz-Canel is in line to succeed Raúl in the Council of State, this is not equivalent to being number two in the regime.
General Raúl Castro leads Cuba not because he is president of the Council of State, but because he is first secretary of the Communist Party, head of the armed forces, and Fidel’s brother. Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution makes it clear that the Communist Party is “the superior leading force of the society and the State.” It is the eighty-two-year-old Machado who remains second secretary of the fifteen-member Politburo of the Communist Party—and thus, at least for now, Raúl Castro’s heir apparent. Under Cuba’s governing succession protocol, the military-dominated Politburo is the cabal that will recommend, when the time comes, the country’s next leader.
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Read more: www.worldaffairsjournal.org
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