Cuba turned the page after more than six decades with the Castro brothers in power. Raúl Castro, 89, retired on Monday, but will remain present at the country’s strategic decisions, in a symbolic transition that maintains the one-party system.
“The nation’s strategic decisions will be consulted with Army General Raúl Castro Ruz,” said 60-year-old President Miguel Díaz-Canel, elected first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the country’s highest office.
“The army general will remain in attendance because he is a benchmark for every Cuban communist and revolutionary,” added Díaz-Canel, the island’s first civic leader, in his message at the end of the PCC’s eighth congress that has since been held. was held. Friday.
Castro will provide his “guidance and alertness to any mistake or shortcoming, ready to be the first to confront imperialism with his gun,” he added.
The relief comes in the midst of a deep economic crisis as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the strengthening embargo that the United States has maintained against the island for 60 years.
Until now, most of the 11.2 million inhabitants knew only Fidel and Raúl Castro at the head of power.
“I have known only one party since I was born and so far we live with it and no one is starving,” said Miguel Gainza, a 58-year-old artisan who works in Old Havana and supports this political system.
Cuba is one of only five countries in the world that the Communist Party maintains, along with China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.
– “Manage a country” –
A total of 300 delegates from all over the island gathered in Havana in an area that had been closed off by the police.
While there is fatigue among Cubans due to the shortage and the long queues to get supplies, this country imports 80% of what it consumes.
Delegates on Sunday voted to elect the Central Committee of 114 members, which appointed the Political Bureau, Cuba’s umbrella of power. This select group consisted of three women and eleven men, with an average age of 61.6 years.
Castro’s departure has been accompanied by the retirement of other militants who reached the triumph of the revolution in 1959, such as the second secretary, José Ramón Machado Ventura, aged 90, and Ramiro Valdés, aged 88.
Frustrated by the lack of opportunities, young people, who often want to leave the country, are increasingly expressing their frustration on social networks, after the arrival of mobile internet in 2018.
The government, which has been harassed over the past four years by the tightening of Washington’s sanctions, continues to see ideological struggles as one of its priorities.
“It is good to warn the mercenary who takes advantage of the fate of everyone, those who now call for an invasion, those who are constantly insulting in words and in fact those who do not rest, that the patience of this people knows limits, Díaz Canel said in his message to Congress behind closed doors, the fragments of which were postponed by state media.
At the opening of the Congress on Friday, Raúl Castro asked to “diligently” ensure the unity of the Communist Party and “never accept divisions” under “false pretenses of greater democracy.”
The one party in Cuba “will always be at the center of the enemy’s campaigns,” he said.
– “Cuba more connected” –
At the pizzeria where he works with rap in the background, 30-year-old Luis Enrique Oramas says that “if they let people say what they think, it would be like in other places, (there would be) two or even three parties. “
“Faced with the immobility of the (Joe) Biden administration, which has left (Donald) Trump’s policies intact and the challenge of a more connected and transnationalized Cuba, Cuban elites are choosing to close ranks” and “each internally. postpone debate “. Arturo López Levy, a professor of International Relations at Holy Names University, told AFP.
Activists, artists and intellectuals are intensively active in networks, in a country where demonstrations hardly take place.
While the PCC congress was being held, some 20 of them reported being prevented from leaving their homes by police, according to a tweet published Saturday by the San Isidro opposition movement.
They also said they had been incommunicado with internet interruptions in their homes.
“What are attendees at the 8th Congress afraid of? That they will ruin the simulation party,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, America director at Amnesty International, said on Twitter.
“While patting themselves on the back for maintaining their authoritarian regime,” he added.
During the Congress, the party passed a resolution to face political and ideological “undermining”.