Diaz-Canel ‘will defend the revolution’

Post-Castro era begins as new Cuban leader vows continuity, change Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Raul Castro will have a role.

HAVANA— In his first hour as Cuba’s new head of state on Thursday, Miguel Diaz-Canel sought to make one thing clear: Raul Castro may no longer be president, but he is still the power to be reckoned with in this island nation.

“Raul … will be key to the process of making the most important decisions on the future of the nation,” Diaz-Canel, 57, said Thursday on the floor of Cuba’s National Assembly after he was formally named the country’s new head of state.

The National Assembly’s pro- cedure ended Castro rule after nearly 60 years, shifting power toward a younger generation born after Cuba’s revolution.

Raul Castro, who took over from his older brother, Fidel, in 2008, will remain the head of Cuba’s powerful Communist Party. Fidel died in 2016 at age 90.

On Thursday, Castro followed Diaz-Canel’s stiff, serious speech with a far longer, more animated and sometimes playful discourse that stole the thunder of the day. Seeming supremely comfortable, he often digressed, tackling issues from diversity to Cuban history to climate change. He openly described the choice of Diaz-Canel as a handpicked succession.

Castro vowed to stay on as head of the Communist Party until his term ends in 2021.

“When I’m gone, and that’s in the future,” Castro said, “he will assume as first secretary of the Communist Party, if he does a good job. That’s how it’s been planned.”

Signalling reforms to come, however, Castro said that in July, Cuba would create a new committee with the aim of revamping its constitution. The socialist character of Cuba, he said, would not change, but he acknowledged that “we thought, at this point, we would have advanced more” on the road toward greater economic reforms.

“We haven’t renounced the pursuit of private-sector work,” he said.

Though highly symbolic for Cuba, the narrative of the end of the Castro era was largely played down by state media, which sought to portray the transition as an exercise in continuity.

Diaz-Canel vowed to bring “continuity to the Cuban revolution,” and talked of cautious change, but always in the context of Cuban socialism.

“There is no room for those who aspire to a capitalist restoration,” he said. “We will defend the revolution and continue to prefect socialism.”