Cuba’s new leader: a progressive, a hardliner and above all an enigma
>> As soon as Cuba and the Obama administration decided to restore diplomatic relations, decades of bitter stagnation began to give way. Embassies were being reopened. Americans streamed to the island. The curtain was suddenly pulled back from Cuba, a nation frozen out by the Cold War.
But one mystery remained: While nearly everyone knew of Cuba’s president, Raúl Castro, his hand-picked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, was virtually unknown.
So when members of the US Congress visited Cuba in early 2015, they peppered Mr Díaz-Canel with questions: What did he think of the revolution that defined the island’s politics and its place on the world stage?
“I was born in 1960, after the revolution,” he told the group, according to lawmakers in the meeting. “I’m not the best person to answer your questions on the subject.”
Mr Díaz-Canel, who became Cuba’s new president Thursday, the day before his 58th birthday, has spent his entire life in the service of a revolution he did not fight.
Born one year after Fidel Castro’s forces took control of the island, Mr Díaz-Canel is the first person outside the Castro dynasty to lead Cuba in decades. He took the helm of government Thursday morning to a standing ovation from the National Assembly, which elected him in a nearly unanimous vote. Raúl Castro embraced him, lifting the younger man’s arm in triumph.
Mr Díaz-Canel’s slow and steady climb up the ranks of the bureaucracy has come through unflagging loyalty to the socialist cause — he “is not an upstart nor improvised,” Mr Castro has said — but he largely stayed behind the scenes until recent years.
Now, as leader, Mr Díaz-Canel is suddenly taking on a difficult balancing act. Most expect him to be a president of continuity, especially because he arrives in the shadow of Raúl Castro, who will remain the head of the armed forces and the Communist Party.
But Mr Díaz-Canel also has to figure out how to resuscitate the economy at a time when President Donald Trump is stepping back from engaging with Cuba. On top of that, Mr Díaz-Canel must find a way to manage the frustrations of a Cuban population impatient with the pace of change on the island — without the heft of his predecessor’s revolutionary credentials.
Such credentials have been the bedrock of political power in Cuba ever since Fidel Castro seized control of the nation in 1959. In the ensuing years, the Castros ruled over Cuba with ironclad control, bolstered by a cadre of loyalists, nearly all of whom had fought alongside them in the revolution.
In the end, the most effective opposition to the Castro brothers was time.
Fidel Castro handed power to Raúl in 2006, then died 10 years later at the age of 90. Raúl then ushered in some of the most substantial reforms in decades, and is now orchestrating yet another one — the passing of the torch to a new generation.
After opening up the economy to private investment and entrepreneurialism, expanding travel in and out of the country and re-establishing ties with the great enemy, the United States, Castro has selected Mr Díaz-Canel to fill his shoes.
But, “he is someone who has very little exposure to US political or cultural figures,” Daniel Erikson, a former State Department official, said of Mr Díaz-Canel. “Frankly, he isn’t that well-known in the rest of Latin America, either.”
In his speech before the National Assembly, Mr Díaz-Canel offered many of the same revolutionary talking points of his predecessors, but perhaps with less of the verve or creativity of Fidel Castro or the gravitas of Raúl.
Raúl Castro said Thursday that he thought Mr Díaz-Canel would serve two terms as president, for a total of 10 years. After that, Mr Castro said, he envisioned Mr Díaz-Canel taking over as party leader in 2021, when Mr Castro suggested that he would retire from that post for good. This, to some, is a glimpse of the future leadership structure of Cuba after the Castros.
Ever since Mr Díaz-Canel was named first vice president in 2013, Cubans and Cuba watchers alike have scrambled to find out more about the enigmatic heir apparent, combing through his track record as party leader in the provinces of Villa Clara and Holguín, and later as minister of higher education, for clues on how he will lead.
In each position, according to those who knew him at the time, Mr Díaz-Canel has been a quiet but effective leader, seemingly open to change. Many called him a good listener, while others described him as approachable, free of the rigidness and inaccessibility of typical party chiefs.
Through it all, he has also been a relentless defender of the revolution and the principles and politics it brought.
Stories of his Everyman qualities have spread widely in recent years: how he rode his bike to work instead of taking a government vehicle during gas shortages; how he defended the rights of a gay club in Santa Clara in the face of protests; how he patiently listened to academics grouse as minister of higher education.
More recently, he was a leading voice in the push for internet access in Cuba, arguing that the nation could not seal itself off from the outside world. Those who know him say he does not adhere to the belief that Cuba can exempt itself from the modernisation necessary to participate in the global economy.