Castro confirms he will resign, ending long era
HAVANA — Raul Castro said Friday he is resigning as head of Cuba’s Communist Party, ending an era of formal leadership by him and his brother Fidel Castro that began with the 1959 revolution.
The 89yearold made the announcement Friday in a speech at the opening of the Eighth Congress of the ruling party, the only one allowed on the island.
He said he was retiring with the sense of having “fulfilled his mission and confident in the future of the fatherland.”
Castro didn’t say whom he would endorse as his successor as first secretary of the Communist Party. But he previously indicated that he favors yielding control to Miguel DiazCanel, 60, who succeeded him as president in 2018 and is the standard bearer of a younger generation of loyalists who have been pushing an economic opening without touching Cuba’s oneparty system.
His retirement means that for the first time in more than six decades, Cubans won’t have a Castro formally guiding their affairs, and it comes at a difficult time with many on the island anxious about what lies ahead.
The coronavirus pandemic, painful financial reforms and restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have battered the economy, which shrank 11% last year as a result of a collapse in tourism and remittances. Long food lines and shortages have brought back echoes of the “special period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Much of the debate inside Cuba is focused on the pace of reform, with many complaining that the “historic generation” represented by Castro has been too slow to open the economy.
In January, DiazCanel threw the doors open to a broader range of private enterprise — a category long banned or tightly restricted — permitting Cubans to legally operate many types of businesses from their homes.
Raul succeeded his brother as head of the party in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016.