Castro rule in Cuba nears end as Miguel Diaz-Canel named sole candidate for leadership change

HAVANA — Cuba’s National Assembly cleared the way for the end of Castro rule on Wednesday, naming longtime Communist Party figure Miguel Diaz-Canel as 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 Raúl Castro as the island’s leader and close out nearly 60 years of control by Raúl Castro and his late brother Fidel.

The appointment of Diaz-Canel was highly expected and underscored a transition to younger generation born after the 1959 communist revolution. But Diaz-Canel is also seen as a steady hand who is unlikely to push major policy shifts or reform.

For years, the nation has gradually tested greater economic and social freedoms at home, while also navigating new and complicated 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 — will be voted on later Wednesday and scheduled to be announced Thursday.

In Cuba’s strictly managed political process, his public naming as the lone candidate made it a near certainty that Diaz-Canel would emerge victorious — serving as the first member outside the Castro family to rule Cuba since communist forces swept to victory to oust a U.S.-backed government in one of the defining moments of the Cold War.

A consensus builder, Diaz-Canel is part of Cuban generation who came of age in the shadow of the olive-drab wearing revolutionaries now in their 80s and 90s. He is likely to make decisions in concert with the country’s communist brain trust.

“You can look at the Raúl Castro and Diaz-Canel as mentor and disciple,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat.

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 was who was not named. Those excluded included some hard-line elderly revolutionaries such as José Ramón Machado Ventura, who fought with the Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist, 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 Raúl Castro, 86, will remain head of the powerful Communist Party.

“It’s very significant, it shows that Raúl 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 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 end of an era, Cuban style]

The son of a mechanic, Diaz-Canel 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 to be a liaison to Nicaragua during an unstable period for the Central American nation during U.S. backing for anti-communist Contra rebels. He later became the party’s first secretary in his home state of Villa Clara during Cuba’s “special period” in the early 1990, when the collapse of 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 newly established meeting place for gays and lesbians.

He rose to the job of education minister in 2009. In 2013, Diaz-Canel intervened in a dispute with a group of young professors at Cuba’s University of Matanzas. They had started a blog — La Joven Cuba — offering critiques, commentary and accountability on Communist Party policies and personalities.

“We spent a lot of time preparing, thinking what are we going to say?” said Harold Cardenas, one of the professors involved in the blog. “We had big speeches prepared, about how our blog was valuable to Cuban society. But then, when we got there, and [Diaz-Canel’s] first words were, ‘What do you need to keep doing what you do? And how can I help?’”

Cardenas is now among those seeing Diaz-Canel’s new tenure as a chance for a measured change.

“He has a very different approach than what we’ve seen before,” Cardenas said. “In the 1990s, he was one of the first Cuban leaders using a laptop, and now you see him using his tablet. I do think Diaz-Canel can bring change, will also keeping continuity to our system.”

Yet, at least on freedom of expression, Diaz-Canel’s position has appeared to harden in recent years.

In a video leaked last year, for instance, shows Diaz-Canel inside a party meeting, threatening to block a website for acting “against the revolution” and accusing European diplomats of subversive activities in Havana.

[Trump’s Cuba policy tried to define “good” tourist to the island]

Fidel Castro, before his death in 2016, had sought to stop the creation of a personality cult, forbidding statues or street names minted in his name. 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. The website of Juventud Rebelde simply showed the Cuban flag as a guidepost, with all roads leading to socialism.

During the National Assembly gathering, Cuban television announcers used buzzwords such as “unity” and “continuity” in their broadcasts. State media tweeted under the hashtag #SomosContinuidad (We are continuity). The message to the populous was clear: The end of an era with a Castro as head of state does not mean the end of Cuba’s communist system.

For some elderly Cubans, the dawn of an era without a Castro in Cuba’s top job seemed almost unimaginable.

Giraldo Baez, a 78-year-old former factory administrator, said he first remembers hearing the name Fidel Castro on the radio in 1950s. “I heard in other radios around our house, because we were too poor to have one,” he said.

For six decades, he said, he was a loyal “Fidelista and Raulista” — a constant backer of both brothers’ rule.

[Opinion: Cuba without the Castros]

“For me, not having a Fidel or Raul, it’s almost impossible to conceive of. It’s almost out of my realm of understanding. But even as they go, I feel we still need to follow their ideas,” Baez said.

“We do need change,” he said. “The state cannot operate all commerce and trade. The new generation of leaders has our future in their hands, and I have confidence in them.”

On Havana’s President’s Avenue, lined with statues of Latin America leaders, a 22-year-old veterinarian sat with her friend, a 44-year-old housewife.

“Things are bad, and we need change, but nothing will change,” said the 44-year-old, who declined to give her name out of concern that her comments could be seen by the government. “You go to the store, either you can’t find food or the prices are too high … The one coming in is the same as the one leaving. Like I said, nothing is going to change.”

Her younger friend chimed in: “You go the market, and you can’t find chopped meat. You can’t find anything. And this new person isn’t going to help with that.”

Some Cubans, however, harbored cautious optimism that a new generation of leaders would somehow be less tethered to Cuba’s past, and more focused on its future.

“For us, this is like trying to imagine a new color, one that you haven’t seen before,” said Charlie, a 22-year-old Havana DJ.

“We don’t want capitalism. That won’t work for us,” he said. “But what we want is something that we haven’t seen yet. All I can do is hope that since Diaz-Canel is younger, and knows the people, that he understands what we need and is willing to deliver. We know it’s going to take time. No one is expecting change overnight.”

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