Castro rule in Cuba nears an end as new leader named
Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, is unlikely to push major policy reforms or shifts
HAVANA — Cuba’s National Assembly cleared the way for the end of Castro rule on Wednesday, naming longtime Communist Party figure Miguel Diaz-Canel the sole candidate for head of state.
The move virtually ensured that the 57-year-old Diaz-Canel, long groomed for leadership, would replace President Raul Castro and close out nearly 60 years of control by Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 at age 90, and his younger brother Raul.
The appointment of Diaz-Canel underscores a transition to a generation born after the 1959 communist revolution. But DiazCanel is also seen as a steady hand unlikely to push major policy shifts or reform.
For years, the nation has gradually tested greater economic and social freedoms at home, while navigating new political openings with the United States forged during the Obama administration.
The nomination of Diaz-Canel, along with 31 other members of Cuba’s ruling Council of State, is scheduled to be announced today.
His public naming as the lone candidate made it a near certainty that Diaz-Canel would serve as the first member outside the Castro family to rule Cuba since communist forces ousted a U.S.backed government in one of the defining moments of the Cold War.
A consensus builder, DiazCanel is part of Cuban generation who came of age in the shadow of revolutionaries now in their 80s and 90s. He is likely to make decisions in concert with the country’s communist brain trust.
The nominees for Council of State, the leadership’s inner circle, included Cuba’s first black politicians for the position of first vice president, and three female vice presidents.
But almost as important were those not named. They included some hard-line elderly revolutionaries who fought in the Cuban revolution.
Though all are strict party loyalists, the relative youth of the new council suggested a passing of the torch, even though Raul Castro, 86, will remain head of the powerful Communist Party.
“It’s very significant. It shows that Raul has been successful in bringing into retirement much of the octogenarian group,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst and now a professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “These people have been named for their obedience to the party. But this will strengthen the position of continuing reform along the lines we have been seeing.”
The son of a mechanic, DiazCanel became an electronic engineer at the Central University of Las Villas before joining Cuba’s military. Later, he became a college professor and built ties to the Communist Party.
In 1987, he was assigned as a liaison to Nicaragua during an unstable period for the Central American nation when the U.S. backed anti-communist contra rebels. He later became the party’s first secretary in his home state of Villa Clara in the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought brutal scarcities.
He became known as an approachable, efficient manager who held impromptu front-porch meetings in shorts and T-shirts.
He also showed something of an independent streak, resisting party pressure, for instance, to shut down a new meeting place for gays and lesbians.
Fidel Castro, before his death, had sought to stop the creation of a personality cult, forbidding statues or naming streets after him. In perhaps a nod to that request, Cuba’s official press was largely devoid of ponderous coverage reflecting on the Castro family ceding power, and focused instead on the technical aspects of the transition.