The last day of Raúl Castro, the pragmatic leader who emerged from Fidel’s shadow in Cuba

On his last day as the head of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raúl Castro, 89, passes power to a new generation leaders, in a historic moment after 62 years of presence of the Castro brothers at the head of the country, but without any change of political line.

Raúl Castro has been for decades in the shadow of his brother Fidel. Now he is retiring as a pragmatic leader who launched unprecedented economic reforms in Cuba, but is leaving without concluding them and without giving in to the principle of a single party.

When his charismatic brother fell ill in 2006 and gave him power, Raúl, used to being behind the scenes, was the aim of the spotlights.

“He never tried to emulate his brother’s personality, he built his own leadership, which was more rational and pragmatic,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue.

Reforms

The country made progress when it formally assumed the presidency in 2008. Restrictions lifted travel abroad and keep opponents away from prisons.

He also undertook economic reforms, allowing the sale of homes, as many began to work in the private sector with the proliferation of small businesses.

And in 2014, he surprised the world by announcing the restoration of diplomatic relations with the United States, resulting in a thaw that only lasted until 2016.

“As long as I live, I will be ready, with my foot on the stirrup, to defend the homeland, the revolution and socialism”

Raul Castro

Former President of Cuba

A reserved man

This reserved man retires leaving Miguel Diaz-Canel, 60, at the head of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the highest office in the country.

Dressed in his military uniform, Raúl confirmed his retirement on Friday at the CCP’s Eighth Congress.

“As long as I live, I will be ready, with my foot on the stirrup, to defend the homeland, the revolution and socialism,” he declared.

The life of the Castro brothers was marked by the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

“After the war (…) imprisonment, exile, one of the three things is what unites men the most, and most of us have gone through all three”, a- he declared himself in the documentary “La Guerra necessary”. (1980).

The origin of the Castros is in their native Birán, Province of Holguín (east), where Raúl lived with the children of his father’s farm workers, swimming in rivers and long riding.

At only 22 years old and with no military experience, he joined his brother Fidel to attack the Moncada barracks July 26, 1953. He then acquired fame by snatching the weapon from a sergeant.

After nearly two years in prison, they went into exile in Mexico in 1955 to return aboard the yacht Granma and start war in the Sierra Maestra, which led them to victory two years later.

Despite his young and hairless face, unlike other revolutionaries “barbudos”, Raúl made some tough decisions. Are awarded firing squad orders to the agents of the dictatorship, after the flight of Fulgencio Batista.

“He could not present himself before the enemy as a charitable soul”, he said in 1993 in an interview with Diario de México.

However, he was a committed leader to his men. He knew his troops and he was not minister of blitz visits to a military base.

“He liked to chat, gossip, make jokes and have drinks with his officers … He has this stuff soldiers appreciate,” says Hal Klepak, professor emeritus of history and strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada.

His other quality is that “he has always been a good organizer / administrator” and “has shown great talent and great ability to organize and lead” the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), one of the pillars of today’s Cuba, says Shifter.

He also treated structuring the CCP, another foundation of the Cuban political and social system.

As Minister of Defense for 50 years, he sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fight for the independence of Angola and other African countries in the 1970s and 1980s in the “deployment of forces armies of a Latin American country outside the largest region in history, ”says Klepak.

During this period he was at the origin of the trial which resulted in the execution of General Arnaldo ochoa for links to drug trafficking in 1989.

Although Raúl Castro was a reformer, Shifter considers his economic project it was unfinished and that it did not “open the way to” political pluralism and “maintain an authoritarian and repressive state”.

At the end of the revolution, he married his comrade in arms Vilma Espín, died in 2007. They had three daughters and a son, and neither is in the line of succession to power.

Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín, the couple’s son, disappeared from the public eye after taking part in secret negotiations for the thaw with the United States.

In the heart of the mountain, in a city of Santiago de Cuba, lie the ashes of Vilma and 271 other revolutionaries.

It is the same place where Raúl established the second front of the rebel army in 1956 and where there is a crypt with his name Checked in.

AFP