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02/27/13 - WBEZ (blog) - Change at the top in Cuba, though the old guys linger

By Achy Obejas
On Sunday, Raúl Castro announced that he would serve as Cuba's president
for one more five year term, as had been widely predicted (including
[1]here). And almost as anticipated, Ramón Machado Ventura, his First Vice
President, was kicked to the curb in favor of a fresh face, Miguel Díaz
Canel.

The naming of Díaz Canel to be the country's number two caught most
observers by surprise. He was widely rumored to be under consideration for
the post of President of the National Assembly, roughly equivalent to the
U.S.'s Speaker of the House, and few had imagined him in the Biden role.
(The presidency of the National Assembly went to Esteban Lazo, a longtime
loyalist, the first Afro-Cuban to reach such a high post, and the
assembly's first new president in 20 years.)

If Díaz Canel actually makes it to the presidency, he'll be the first
non-Castro in the top post in Cuba since, technically, 1976, when Osvaldo
Dorticós was pushed out of the presidency -- a post that been mostly
ceremonial until that point. Fidel Castro, then the prime minister and the
real head of government, assumed the presidency and imbued it with its
current significance.

If there appears to be muted enthusiasm for Diaz Canel, even in Cuba --
you'll notice that there have been no open, public events with Díaz Canel
-- it's that there have been Castro dauphins before (Carlos Lage, Felipe
Pérez Roque, Roberto Robaina and Carlos Aldana, to name a few) who
stumbled and fell on the way up. They're all still in Cuba, relegated to a
kind of internal exile where they're left alone but have no say about
anything and are completely unavailable to the people and the media.

Díaz Canel, who at 52 signals a generational transition, isn't as flashy
as any of these other guys: he hasn't been central to policy the way Lage
was, or had a particular mentoring relationship with Fidel like Pérez
Roque, or has had the kind of international assignments that Robaina was
trusted with, or given the kind of internal profile that Aldana was
allowed.

He is an up by the bootstraps guy who performed well enough in a series of
provincial assignments and has been slowly, like molasses, moving up the
ranks. As a friend of mine in Cuba said, he's either brilliant or a
complete mediocrity. For more on Díaz Canel and his rise, there's a pretty
decent piece in the [2]Los Angeles Times.

Díaz Canel does, however, have an ace: a longstanding relationship with
Ramiro Váldes, the third Comandante de la Revolución after the Castro
brothers, and Cuba's former longtime security chief and all-around Darth
Vader. How close they might be is a mystery, but Díaz Canel -- who is
rumored to have tensions with the outgoing VP Machado Ventura, one of
Raúl's closest personal friends -- would not have been made heir without
Váldes' approval. How far back they go is unknown, but in 1997, when Che
Guevara's remains were returned to Cuba, Váldes and Díaz Canel stood guard
together -- a pairing over which Váldes would have had complete say.

In other words, there may be a generational change coming, but with Váldes
hovering, there may not be much of a power shift at all.

 


Original Source / Fuente Original:
http://www.wbez.org/blogs/achy-obejas/2013-02/change-top-cuba-though-old-guys-linger-105789