Cuba’s Communist Party promotes old guard general amid uncertainty
Cuba’s Communist Party bent its own rules this week to promote an oldguard general to the organization’s top decisionmaking bodies, the latest in a number of recent changes reflecting the challenges of an aging military leadership’s grip on power.
Army corps general Ramon Espinosa, 83, the first vice minister of the Cuban armed forces, became a member of the Communist Party Politburo and its Central Committee during a Party meeting on Tuesday. His designation goes against the Party’s own rules modified in its latest Congress last year to ban officials 60 years and older from holding a seat at the Central Committee and those over 70 from becoming a member of the Politburo.
The secretary of the Central Committee, Roberto Morales Ojeda, asked members to select Espinosa despite the age limits, citing “his long record of service as a military commander inside and outside of Cuba” and “his fidelity to the leaders of the Revolution,” according to Granma, the Party’s daily newspaper. Espinosa fought in Cuba’s incursions in Africa and is thought to be close to Raúl Castro, who officially retired as the Party’s secretary last year but is still the country’s ultimate leader.
Division General Ricardo Rigel Tejeda, 58, recently named chief of the Eastern Army, was also selected as a member of the Party’s Central Committee on Tuesday. Rigel Tejeda replaced Division General
Agustin Peña Porres, the former head of the Eastern Army, who died last year along with several other top active and retired military officials whose deaths have been linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recent appointments illustrate “the importance of ensuring that the military maintains influence in the party and the country’s politics,” said Brian Fonseca, a former U.S. Southern Command senior analyst who is now the director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University.
Espinosa’s designation “is a result of loyalty to Raúl and the revolution as well as the fact that he is well respected,” Fonseca said. “Most appointments follow the same pattern. Still, it’s likely that his designation comes with the understanding that another one will be made in the coming years.”
As generals who fought with the Castro brothers get older, changes atop the leadership have become more frequent.
Espinosa’s designation comes amid rumors about the declining health of the armed forces minister, Álvaro López Miera, 79, also a member of the Politburo. Cuban state media do not usually publish information about the health of government officials, but a recent report indicated that Espinosa and Rigel Tejeda presided over an event commemorating the creation of the Eastern Army, an annual ceremony usually attended by the top army chief. López Miera sent a letter instead congratulating the troops, a Cuban state news agency reported.
López Miera himself took over the armed forces when its former chief, Leopoldo Cintra Frías, 80, one of the old-guard generals close to the Castro brothers, was “liberated of his responsibilities,” just before the start of the Party Congress in April last year, Granma reported.
Cuba’s military is one of the pillars sustaining the six-decade-old regime, and generals fill roughly onethird of the Politburo’s seats. Under Raúl and his successor, Cuba’s handpicked president Miguel Díaz-Canel, top military officials have been given key ministries and other government positions while also taking more seats in political bodies such as the National Assembly and the Party’s Central Committee.