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Cuba's Perilous Political Transition to the PostCastro
Era
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE
Journal of Latin American Studies / Volume 47 / Issue 02 / May 2015, pp 377 - 405
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X15000103, Published online: 02 April 2015
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022216X15000103
How to cite this article:
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE (2015). Cuba's Perilous Political Transition to the PostCastro
Era. Journal of Latin American Studies, 47, pp 377-405 doi:10.1017/
S0022216X15000103
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Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition
to the Post-Castro Era
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE
Abstract. In the years since Raúl Castro took office as president following Fidel
Castro’s illness and retirement, Cuba has embarked on four major transitions
almost simultaneously: a restructuring of elite decision-making; a transformation of
Cuba’s centrally-planned economy into a market socialist economy; a relaxation of
tight social control, providing greater social autonomy for civil society and even a
degree of political decompression; and, a transition from the founding generation
of the political elite (los históricos) to a successor generation, when neither Castro
will hold power. Each of these processes by itself entails political risk; unfolding
together, they constitute the greatest political challenge the Cuban regime has faced
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Keywords: leadership succession, economic reform, political reform, Raúl Castro, Cuba
Introduction
Most analyses of the future of political change in Cuba have focused either on
what would happen at the moment Fidel Castro passed from the scene, or on
what would happen in the aftermath of sudden regime collapse. The focus on
Fidel was understandable; he has long been regarded as the quintessential
example of charismatic leadership. His immense personal authority at the
dawn of the revolutionary government was rooted in his personal courage, political
savvy and heroic achievements as the leader who made the Revolution.
Historically, the regime drew its legitimacy from Fidel Castro, not the other
Professor of Government, School of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, DC
. Email: wleogrande@american.edu.

See Edward Gonzalez, ‘Political Succession in Cuba’, Studies in Comparative Communism, :
– (), pp. –; and Jaime Suchlicki (ed.), Problems of Succession in Cuba (Miami,
FL: University of Miami, ); Jorge I. Domínguez, ‘Political Succession in Cuba’, Third
World Quarterly, :  (), pp. –; Wayne S. Smith, ‘Cuba’s Long Reform’, Foreign
Affairs, :  (), pp. –.

Nelson Valdés, ‘Fidel Castro’s Charismatic Authority’, in Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose
Jiménez, John M. Kirk and William M LeoGrande, Reinventing the Revolution:
A Contemporary Cuba Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, ), pp. –.
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. , – © Cambridge University Press  
doi:./SX
way around. Castro’s heirs, by contrast, would need to anchor their right to
govern on the performance and legitimacy of state institutions, not their personal
virtues, which could only appear weak and pallid in comparison to
Fidel’s. As Raúl Castro himself put it in  when he was first elected president
by the National Assembly, ‘There is only one Commander in Chief
of the Cuban Revolution … Fidel is irreplaceable’.
Yet when the moment came on  July , the hand-off of power from
Fidel to his brother Raúl and a leadership team of six others was smooth and
uneventful. Cubans did not take to the streets in demonstrations or board rafts
to head for Miami. The machinery of government continued functioning
uninterrupted.
Scholarly attention to the prospect of sudden regime collapse was stimulated
by the fall of European communism and the terrible economic crisis precipitated
in Cuba by the loss of Soviet aid. A vast literature of Cuban ‘transitlogy’
resulted. Yet despite numerous prognostications of its imminent demise, the
Cuban regime survived. Unlike the regimes of Eastern Europe, the Cuban state
was bolstered by authentic nationalism and was still governed by the founding
generation of revolutionaries, not a coterie of career-minded apparatchiks.
Much less scholarly attention has been paid to the multifaceted evolutionary
transition currently underway in Cuba, a transition substantially more
complex and perilous than the transition from Fidel to Raúl. In the years
since Raúl took the reins of power, Cuba has embarked on four major transitions
almost simultaneously: () a restructuring of elite decision-making following
Fidel’s retirement; () a transformation of Cuba’s centrally-planned

‘Key address by Comrade Raúl Castro Ruz … at the closing session of the First Session of the
Seventh Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power’, Granma International,
 Feb. .

Hoffman offers an analysis of why the transition was so uneventful in Bert Hoffman,
‘Charismatic Authority and Leadership Change: Lessons from Cuba’s Post-Fidel Succession’,
International Political Science Review, :  (), pp. –.

See, for example, Rhoda Rabkin, ‘Implications of the Gorbachev Era for Cuban Socialism’,
Studies in Comparative Communism, :  (), pp. –; Andreas Pickel, ‘Is Cuba
Different? Regime Stability, Social Change, and the Problem of Reform Strategy’,
Communist and Post-Communist Studies, :  (), pp. –; Michael Radu, ‘Cuba’s
Transition: Institutional Lessons from Eastern Europe’, Journal of Interamerican Studies
and World Affairs, :  (), pp. –; Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Horst Fabian,
‘Analogies Between East European Socialist Regimes and Cuba’, in Carmen Mesa-Lago
(ed.), Cuba After the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, ),
pp. –; Bert Hoffmann, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Cuba’, Review of
Radical Political Economics, :  (), pp. –.

Explanations for regime stability include Jorge I. Domínguez, ‘The Secret of Castro’s Staying
Power’, Foreign Affairs, :  (), pp. –; Marifeli Pérez-Stable, ‘Caught in a
Contradiction: Cuban Socialism between Mobilization and Normalization’, Comparative
Politics, :  (), pp. –; Andreas Pickel, ‘Is Cuba Different? Regime Stability,
Social Change, and the Problem of Reform Strategy’, Communist and Post-Communist
Studies, :  (), pp. –; Hoffmann, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Cuba’.
 William M. LeoGrande
economy into a market socialist economy; () a relaxation of tight social
control, providing greater social autonomy for civil society and even a
degree of political decompression; and () a transition from the founding generation
of the political elite (los históricos) to a successor generation. Each of
these processes by itself entails political risk; unfolding together, they constitute
the greatest political challenge the Cuban regime has faced since the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
The Challenges of the Twenty-first Century
The timing of these changes has been forced on Cuban leaders by circumstances;
they faced urgent problems at the turn of the century that could
not be ignored. Although the regime survived the terrible depression following
the Soviet collapse (the ‘Special Period’), it emerged significantly weakened,
both economically and politically. Production in many sectors and
real wages were still below  levels. For both individuals and enterprises,
weak or perverse incentives crippled productivity. Attempts by other socialist
countries to address these economic contradictions of central planning led to
two distinct outcomes: the European path, in which the advent of market
socialism weakened the political coherence of the party and state, leading
to eventual regime demise; and the Asian path, in which the political
effects of market expansion were contained and managed by existing
institutions.
On the political front, a decade of deep austerity had taken a toll on the
regime’s legitimacy. ‘The crisis affected not only the general functioning of
the economy and daily subsistence, but also ideology, values, social psychology,
and political culture’, wrote Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernández.
The political culture of socialism, grounded in equality, meritocracy, a standard of
living achieved through work, and certainty about the rules of the system would
enter into daily tension with individualism, disillusionment, uncertainty, despair,
and skepticism. … When the end of the crisis came into view, it was clear that the
emerging society was one that had changed over the intervening decade’.
Young people who came of age during the Special Period did not remember
the hardships of pre-revolutionary Cuba or the relatively good years of the
s and early s. To them, the Revolution meant privation. Deprived
of so much during the s, they were unusually intent on obtaining material

Walder describes the causal mechanisms through which market reforms led to unintended
political consequences, which proved fatal for European communism. Andrew G. Walder
(ed.), The Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of Political Decline in China
and Hungary (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, ).

Rafael Hernández, ‘Revolution, Reform, and Other Cuban Dilemmas’, Socialism and
Democracy, :  (), pp. –.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
things, and large numbers yearned to leave the island, seeing no hope for a
prosperous future at home.
Cubans of African descent, once core supporters of the Revolution because
it did away with juridical discrimination and provided them with unprecedented
upward mobility, suffered disproportionately during the Special
Period. Few Afro-Cubans had family abroad to send them remittances.
Because they lived in poor neighbourhoods, they had fewer opportunities to
earn hard currency by opening paladares (private restaurants) or casas particulares
(rented rooms) for tourists. And because of lingering racism, they were
less likely to be employed in the tourist industry where workers received
hard currency tips. To get by (resolver), some young Afro-Cubans turned to
hustling and the ‘informal economy’, thereby reinforcing the worst stereotypes
associating race with crime. The alienation of Afro-Cuban youth was apparent
in the caustically critical lyrics of popular rap and hip-hop music.
The regime’s political infrastructure also suffered. Cubans spent hours
getting to work because the public transportation system, never good, deteriorated
for lack of fuel and spare parts. They spent hours more searching for food
and other staples. People had no time for political meetings and little patience
for revolutionary exhortations in the face of such material hardship. The
Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), charged with ‘revolutionary
vigilance’ against counter-revolution and crime, largely ceased to function.
Otherwise law-abiding citizens had no alternative but to deal in the black
market to make ends meet, and CDR block captains were no exception. ‘The
militants are too busy trying to keep themselves alive like everybody else to
bother much with denouncing anyone’, one Cuban explained.
Although Communist Party membership grew to some ,, it faced
similar problems. Leadership at the provincial level struggled, not always effectively,
to cope with the political strains of the Special Period. In  alone, six

Katrin Hansing, ‘Changes From Below: New Dynamics, Spaces, and Attitudes in Cuban
Society’, NACLA Report on the Americas, :  (), pp. –, . See also Graziella
Pogolotti, ‘Para dialogar con los jóvenes’, Juventude Rebelde,  Feb. ; ‘¿Qué piensan
(y hacen) los jóvenes?’, Panel ‘Ultimo Jueves’ de la Revista Temas, debate que hicimos el
 de febrero de , available at www.temas.cult.cu/debates/libro%/-%
jovenes.pdf.

Alejandro de las Fuentes, ‘The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba’, NACLA Report on the
Americas, :  (), pp. –; Esteban Morales Domínguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on
the Revolution and Racial Inequality (New York: Monthly Review Press, ); Morales
Domínguez, La problemática racial en Cuba: algunos de sus desafios (La Habana: Editorial
José Martí, ); Ezekiel Dixon-Román and Wilfredo Gómez, ‘Cuban Youth Culture
and Receding Futures: Hip Hop, Reggaetón and Pedagogías Marginal’, Pedagogies: An
International Journal, :  (), pp. –.

Archibald R. M. Ritter, ‘Economic Illegalities and the Underground Economy in Cuba’,
Focal, RFC--, March ; Roberto Suro, ‘With Cubans Desperate for Change,
Castro Takes New Look at U.S.’, Washington Post,  Aug. .
 William M. LeoGrande
of the  party first secretaries in the provinces were replaced. With economic
recovery key to regime stability, the party gave in to the temptation to
usurp management responsibilities from provincial and local government –
‘bossiness’, Raúl Castro called it at the Party’s First National Conference in
. In so doing, it neglected its political task of cultivating regime support
at the grassroots.
Another vulnerability that plagued the Communist Party was Fidel Castro’s
style of governance. From the earliest days of the Revolution, Castro harboured
a deep distrust of institutions. During the Special Period, he came to
rely more and more on his personal staff, the Equipo de Coordinación y
Apoyo al Comandante en Jefe (also known as el Grupo de Apoyo), comprised
by young acolytes Fidel had plucked from the ranks of the Union of Young
Communists. The Grupo evolved into a kind of shadow cabinet, operating
at Fidel’s behest outside the normal lines of authority of party and state.
The Grupo had a reputation for fanaticism – being more Fidelista than
Fidel – and Cubans dubbed them ‘los talibanes’ for their rigid ideological
orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the formal party languished; although its statutes stipulated
that a Congress be held every five years to set policy and renovate the
leadership, the  deadline came and went with no new Congress.
The erosion of the regime’s capacity for social and political control contributed
to the spread of corruption. Corruption was not a new problem, but it
was exacerbated during the Special Period by economic hardship. To supplement
inadequate state salaries, workers stole goods from work and sold
them on the black market. A three-part investigative report by the Cuban
newspaper Juventude Rebelde, entitled ‘The Big Old Swindle’, found that
half the state-run retail enterprises visited by reporters were cheating customers
by short-weighting purchases. At the highest levels, some managers of
import/export businesses and joint enterprises were corrupted by the easy
availability of hard currency through expense accounts and bribes by foreigners
seeking preferred access to the Cuban market.
The government launched a crackdown against crime and corruption in
early , when nationwide audits discovered irregularities in the accounts
of  per cent of the , state enterprises examined. In , Political

‘Party First Secretaries Replaced in Three Provinces’, Radio Rebelde (Havana),  July ,
as reported in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts,  July .

‘Our Responsibility Is to Promote Greater Democracy in Our Society, Beginning by
Providing an Example Within the Ranks of the Party’, Granma International,  Jan. .

Armando F. Mastrapa, III, ’Equipo de Coordinación y Apoyo al Comandante en Jefe:
Cuba’s Parallel Government?’, Cuba in Transition  (Miami: Association for the
Study of the Cuban Economy, ACSE, ), pp. –; Samuel Farber, ‘Visiting Raúl
Castro’s Cuba’, New Politics, :  (), pp. –.

Yailin Orta Rivera, Norge Martínez Montero y Roberto Suárez, ‘La vieja gran estafa’,
Juventude Rebelde, ,  and  Oct. .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
Bureau members visited local party organisations around the country to press
the campaign. ‘Raúl was adamant that the revolution is threatened not just by
the United States, but by corruption and liberal attitudes that give space for it
to grow’, according to a mid-level party official. On  April, control over
hard currency accounts was taken away from individual enterprises and executive
expense accounts were abolished. In September, the armed forces took
over management of the Port of Havana to halt pilferage by dock workers
who were diverting resources from the ports by the ton-load. On 
October, thousands of young social workers occupied gas stations all over
Havana in a campaign to combat the theft of gasoline, half of which was
being diverted into the black market.
A few weeks later, speaking at the University of Havana, Fidel Castro gave a
four-hour speech that has come to be regarded as something of a political testament.
It was a cri de coeur, warning that the Revolution was in peril, not
from the United States, but from its own internal weaknesses. ‘This country
can self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself’, he said, ‘We can destroy
ourselves, and it would be our fault’. He began by praising the social workers
for their contribution to the ongoing ‘war against corruption’. He railed
against theft in all its many forms, from pilfering on the shop floor to embezzlement
in high office. ‘Just how many ways of stealing do we have in this
country?’, he asked plaintively. But his fears reached well beyond corruption.
He worried about the hand-off of power from the Revolution’s founding generation
to its successors. He worried about the inequality created during the
Special Period, and he railed against the ‘new rich’, including not only
small businessmen, but also recipients of remittances. Most of all, he
worried that concessions to the market were corroding revolutionary values.
Castro’s rhetoric harkened back to the Revolutionary Offensive of ,
when the state nationalised all the small urban shops in the country (during
which Fidel famously declared, ‘We did not make a revolution to guarantee
the right to trade’), and to the Rectification campaign of the late s.
Now, Fidel seemed to be promising a new counter-offensive against creeping

‘Irregularidades llevan a mayor control en empresas cubanas’, EFE,  Feb. ; Marc
Frank, ‘Anti-corruption Drive Signals Change in Cuba’, Financial Times (London), 
July .

Marc Frank, ‘Cuba’s Businesses Feel Pinch as Dollar Is Squeezed from Economy’, Financial
Times,  April .

Fidel Castro, Speech at the University of Havana,  Nov. ; Marc Frank, ‘Castro Vows
to Go after the “New Rich”’, Financial Times,  Dec. .

Marc Frank, ‘Castro Enlists Cuba’s Young in War on Corruption’, Financial Times, 
Nov. .

Fidel Castro, Speech at the University of Havana,  Nov. .

‘The Revolutionary Offensive: “We Did Not Make a Revolution to establish the Right to
Trade”’ (speech on  March ), in Martin Kenner and James Petras (eds.), Fidel
Castro Speaks (New York, Grove Press, ), pp. –.
 William M. LeoGrande
capitalism, with , young social workers in the vanguard. Soon, social
workers were monitoring refineries, riding along on tanker trucks, refurbishing
schools and hospitals, going door-to-door handing out energy efficient light
bulbs – taking on whatever task their commander-in-chief asked of them.
Historically, mobilisation campaigns like this were carried out by Cuba’s
mass organisations, foremost among them the CDRs. But their deterioration
during the Special Period left them unequal to the task. As Marifeli PérezStable
has written, in the Cuba of the twenty-first century, the old style of
mobilisational politics had lost its effectiveness. Instead, Castro created the
cadre of social workers as a new instrument of mobilisation. Some observers
compared the youth army to Mao Zedong’s Red Guards during the
Cultural Revolution. In truth, there were important parallels. In both
cases, aging leaders, worried about the future of their revolutions, sought to
mobilise a new generation to uphold revolutionary ideals. In both cases,
leaders deeply committed to socialist ideology worried that their regimes’ concessions
to the market were fostering new class divisions and incipient capitalism.
And in both cases, the leaders circumvented existing institutions to
foster a new ideological fervour; in Cuba, because those institutions were so
atrophied; in China, because Mao had lost control of them to his adversaries
in the party leadership. But the differences were nevertheless profound.
Because Cuba did not suffer from a deep split in the party’s leadership,
Cuba’s social workers, unlike China’s Red Guards, did not attack Cuban institutions
and leaders. Their purpose was not to ‘bombard the headquarters’, but
to protect the revolutionary regime from the corrosion of corruption.
The Transition in Elite Decision-making
Inevitably, the departure of a charismatic leader like Fidel Castro reverberates
throughout the political system. At the highest echelons of the political elite,
the charismatic leader’s heirs have to settle on new rules of the game. The new
leadership is usually more collective, not only because no one can fill the
departed leader’s boots, but because surviving elites generally prefer a
process that is more rule-guided and hence less arbitrary than in the past.
This, at least, has been the experience of communist successions from countries
as diverse as the Soviet Union (Stalin), China (Mao Zedong) and Vietnam
(Ho Chi Minh).

Marifeli Pérez-Stable, ‘Caught in a Contradiction’.

Frank, ‘Castro Vows to Go after the ‘New Rich’.

On Stalin’s succession, see Myron Rush, Political Succession in the USSR (New York:
Columbia University Press, ); on Mao’s, see Frederick C. Teiwes, Leadership,
Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to the Politics of Succession
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, ); on Ho Chi Minh’s, see Robert F. Rogers, ‘Policy
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
Raúl Castro himself anticipated as much. ‘Many other comrades and I will
have authority’ he remarked in a  interview, long before taking the reins
of power. ‘However, we want the party to have it, which is the only thing
which can guarantee continuity, the unity of the nation. Within that unity
we can have differences and everything we might want to air’. Moreover,
according to one former Cuban official, Raúl was always more willing to entertain
debate. ‘Fidel is a god, and he [Raúl Castro] is a human being’ the official
said. ‘You can’t argue with Fidel, you can’t contradict him. You can with
Raúl.’
Collective leadership typically means that intra-elite debates, at least within
the Political Bureau of the party, become more meaningful. Leadership politics
shifts from everyone lobbying the founding father to coalitions lobbying one
another, and paying special attention to the undecided. Political resources
like bureaucratic position take on new importance.
A succession’s impact reverberates into lower party echelons as well. New
leaders naturally seek to bring in their own team of advisers and upper-level
managers. These personnel changes, especially when they involve some
degree of generational turnover, are bound to have policy consequences.
Studies of leadership succession in Eastern European communist regimes
have found that succession almost always initiated significant changes in the
operation of the regime.
These sorts of changes in elite decision-making became apparent in Cuba
almost as soon as Fidel Castro surrendered power. For two weeks after
Fidel’s  July proclama, Raúl Castro did not appear in public or issue any
statement about his new role. On  August, however, the daily newspaper
Granma ran a story about Raúl’s bravery during the  attack on
Moncada barracks that began the Revolution – lest anyone doubt that his
revolutionary heritage gave him the credentials to lead the country. The
story ended, ‘This is a story that should not be ignored in the context of
today’s events’.
Finally, on  August, Granma published an interview with Cuba’s new
leader, who reassured everyone that the government was functioning
smoothly. From the outset, it was clear that Raúl’s leadership style would
Differences Within the Hanoi Leadership’, Studies in Comparative Communism, : –
(), pp. –.

Vanessa Bauzá, ‘Looking at Cuba’s Future: Who is Raúl Castro?’, South Florida Sun
Sentinel,  July .

Andrrzej Korbonski, ‘Leadership Succession and Political Change in Eastern Europe’,
Studies in Comparative Communism, : – (), pp. –.

Marta Rojas, ‘When Raúl Castro Assumed Responsibility for the Assault on the Moncada
Garrison’, Granma International,  Aug. .

Lazaro Barredo Medina, ‘No Enemy Can Defeat Us’, Granma,  Aug. .
 William M. LeoGrande
be very different. Asked why he had taken so long to make a public appearance,
he replied, ‘I am not used to making frequent appearances in public … that is
my way, and I am thinking of continuing in that way.’ He had no intention
of trying to imitate his brother, he explained a few months later: ‘Those who
imitate fail.’ He would not be making all the speeches on major occasions, but
instead would share the opportunities with other leaders, a signal of his commitment
to collective leadership. When Raúl did give speeches, most often to
the semi-annual meetings of the National Assembly or major Communist
Party conferences, they were short and to the point, not the long, rambling,
didactic excursions for which his brother was famous.
During the first year or so, Raúl was careful to always quote Fidel, thereby
emphasising the continuity of policy and invoking his brother’s legitimacy.
Even when Fidel formally bowed out of the presidency in  and the
National Assembly elected Raúl, in his inaugural speech, the younger Castro
asked the Assembly’s permission to consult Fidel on ‘decisions of special transcendence
for the future of our nation’. No one person could replace the
maximum leader. ‘The Communist Party, a sure guarantee of the unity of
the Cuban nation, is the sole worthy heir to our people’s confidence in its
leader’, Raúl affirmed.
This emphasis on the importance of institutions would prove to be a hallmark
of Raúl Castro’s presidency. Within a year of taking office, he quietly
ended the social worker campaign, sending the youngsters back to their communities.
‘Institutionalization is … one of the pillars of the Revolution’s
invulnerability in the political field’, Raúl said in his inaugural speech to the
National Assembly in . He went on, ‘We should be aware that the functioning
of the State and Government institutions is not yet as effective as our
people rightfully demand.’ Two months later he repeated this message to the
party’s Central Committee, saying, ‘It is vitally necessary to reinforce the
country’s institutions.’ Strengthening the party in particular, he reminded
them, was essential ‘to ensure the continuity of the Revolution when its historic
leaders are gone’.
Unlike Fidel, who worried that institutions might constrain his freedom of
action, Raúl was the quintessential organisation man, valuing careful management,

Barredo Medina, ‘No Enemy Can Defeat Us’.

‘Fidel es insustituible, salvo que lo sustituyamos todos juntos’, Juventude Rebelde,  Dec.
.

‘Key address by Comrade Raúl Castro Ruz … at the closing session of the First Session of the
Seventh Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power’, Granma International,
 Feb. .

Ibid.

‘Continuing to Perfect the Work of the Party and its Authority Before the Masses’, Granma
International,  April .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
sound administrative processes and institution-building. Under his leadership,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces became the most organised, efficient and
respected institution in the country. Over the years, a great many senior
officers were exported to the civilian sector to bring some semblance of order
to the relative chaos of the government bureaucracy. It came as no surprise,
then, that as president, Raúl sought to imbue the rest of the government with
the same managerial principles that worked so well in the armed forces.
‘Improvisation’, he explained on more than one occasion, had led to ‘expensive
irrationalities’.
Raúl Castro’s faith in institutions was also reflected in his belief that people
ought to work their way up through established career paths, gaining experience
along the way. He was no fan of Fidel’s practice of plucking promising
youth from the Union of Young Communists (UJC) to serve on his personal
staff, and then appointing them to top positions in the national government
and provincial party apparatus. Many of these appointees fell into disgrace and
obscurity as quickly as they rose. The first was ‘Landy’ – Luis Orlando
Domínguez, a rising star in his forties whose power derived from his leadership
of the Equipo de Coordinación y Apoyo. He was arrested in  for embezzlement
and sentenced to  years in prison. The next was Roberto Robaina,
the charismatic pony-tailed head of the UJC. In , Fidel appointed
‘Robertico’ foreign minister at the age of , then sacked him six years later
for being too friendly with foreign businessmen and officials. In , Juan
Carlos Robinson, one of the Political Bureau’s youngest members, was arrested
for influence peddling and sentenced to  years in prison.
All these early heirs owed their ascent to their personal relationships with Fidel.
Before his illness, the elder Castro was a ‘minimum winning coalition’ all by
himself. Although senior leaders would debate key policy issues, when Fidel
decided on a direction, the rest of the leadership dutifully fell into line.
Political influence was therefore closely correlated with proximity to Fidel, so it
was no accident that the principal path to power for an aspiring young politician
led through Castro’s personal staff. But the meteoric rise of the protégés deprived
them the political savvy only experience could provide and imbued them with the
hubris of Icarus.
Not surprisingly, the role of the Grupo de Apoyo diminished dramatically
under Raúl. Fidel’s chief of staff, Carlos Valenciaga, was removed in , and

Hal Klepak, Raúl Castro and Cuba: A Military History (New York: Palgrave, ), pp. –
.

‘The Greatest Obstacle that We Face in Fulfilling the Agreements of the Sixth Congress Is
the Psychological Barrier Created by Inertia …’, Granma International,  Aug. .

Foreign Broadcast Information Service, ‘Castro Speaks on Domínguez, Del Pino Cases’,
Latin America Daily Report,  July ; Anita Snow, ‘Reasons for Former Cuban
Official’s Fall from Grace Come to Light’, Associated Press,  Aug. ; ‘Información
del Buró Político sobre Juan Carlos Robinson’, Granma,  June .
 William M. LeoGrande
Cubans began referring to the Grupo as ‘los huerfanitos’ – the little orphans.
In , the UJC instituted a new policy requiring members to spend five years
in their chosen profession before assuming positions of political leadership.
Speaking to the UJC Plenary that adopted the new policy, Raúl pointedly
singled out Political Bureau members Carlos Lage and Felipe Pérez-Roque
as people who had jumped immediately into positions of leadership. While
praising their work, Raúl noted that Lage, a paediatrician, had never practised
medicine, and Pérez-Roque, an electrical engineer, had never worked as one.
‘I would not send him to work in a thermoelectric plant’, Raúl joked,
‘because he could cause a meltdown’. Then Castro became serious: If someone’s
only experience was in student organisations, he asked, ‘What do they
know? How to give good speeches? It is our duty to open up room for new
generations … but not for test tube leaders … rather, for those brought up
on their own efforts’.
When the National Assembly elected Raúl president in , his choice for
vice-president was not Carlos Lage as many people expected, but José Machado
Ventura, a member of the old guard, whose chief responsibility since the s
had been building the organisational apparatus of the Communist Party.
Choosing him underscored Raúl’s determination to strengthen Cuba’s political
institutions, the party first among them.
In March , Raúl abruptly fired Lage and Pérez-Roque, both of whom
were frequently mentioned as possible successors to the Castro brothers. PérezRoque
had served as Fidel’s personal assistant for a decade before being
appointed, aged , to succeed Roberto Robaina at the Foreign Ministry.
Lage, a former member of the Grupo de Apoyo, served as Fidel’s economic
adviser during the Special Period, becoming executive secretary to the
Council of Ministers – the closest thing Cuba had to a prime minister.
Both were removed for criticising los históricos behind their backs and
being too eager to push the older generation off stage. At the same time,
Raúl announced a sweeping reorganisation of the government bureaucracy,
and replaced nine veteran ministers. By , across  ministries, only
three of Fidel’s appointees were still in office. The new ministers tended to
come from the ranks of experienced professionals, especially the armed forces.
Eight years after Fidel stepped down, Cuba appeared to have successfully
navigated the leadership transition and the adoption of a new model of elite
decision-making. That model is more pragmatic, more collective, more

Farber, ‘Visiting Raúl Castro’s Cuba’.

Julieta García Ríos, ‘Dialoga Raúl con participantes en el Pleno del Comité Nacional de la
UJC’, Juventude Rebelde,  Feb. .

Nelson P. Valdés, ‘Cuba After Fidel’, Counterpunch, March, .

Eusebio Mujal-León, ‘Survival, Adaptation, and Uncertainty: The Case of Cuba’, Journal of
International Affairs, :  (), pp. –.

‘Nota oficial del Consejo de Estado de Cuba’, Juventude Rebelde,  March .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
routinised and more focused on delegation than micromanagement. Most
importantly, it is far more respectful of and reliant upon institutions than
ever before. Raúl’s longstanding role as the regime’s number two leader and
designated successor, and his own revolutionary background, have given him
predominant influence within the political elite, thereby avoiding the sorts
of intra-elite conflicts that plagued the successions from Stalin and Mao
Zedong. His consolidation of authority set the stage for a profound,
difficult and potentially divisive economic transition.
Updating the Economic Model: The Transition from Central
Planning to Market Socialism
When Raúl Castro became interim president, the Cuban economy had yet to
fully recover from the Special Period. Although it had grown gradually since
the mid-s, the gains were concentrated in tourism and medical services
for export. The actual production of goods in the island still lagged behind
 levels, and many state enterprises operated at a loss. Agricultural production
was so poor that this fertile island had to import  per cent of its
food at a cost of US$ billion per year. The central problem, Raúl bluntly
pointed out in , was low productivity; ‘We have to erase forever the
notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live
without working.’
Raúl Castro was a communist before his brother, but he was always more
pragmatic. Even before the collapse of European communism, Raúl pushed
Cuba’s defence industries to adopt Western management techniques to
improve productivity. During the Special Period, he convinced a reluctant
Fidel to utilise market mechanisms to restart the economy, opening free
farmers markets and legalising small business. But with Fidel in charge, such
reforms were strictly limited.
As soon as Raúl assumed the presidency, he unleashed a barrage of candid
criticism, blaming the economy’s failures on Cuba’s own policies rather than
the US embargo. In a speech to a closed session of the National Assembly in
December , just five months after taking office, he was blunt. Public transport
was ‘on the verge of total collapse’ after years of neglect. The state was
Cuban $ million in arrears on its payments to small farmers, and Raúl
found it ‘inexplicable’ that ‘bureaucratic red tape’ was holding up these

Armando Nova González, ‘Cuban Agriculture and the Current Economic Transformation
Process’, Cuban Study Group website, , available at http://www.cubastudygroup.org/
index.cfm/from-the-island-series.

‘We Have Adopted Important Decisions That Constitute in Themselves a Structural and
Conceptual Change in the Interest of Preserving and Developing Our Social System and
Making it Sustainable in the Future’, Granma International,  Aug. .
 William M. LeoGrande
payments when small farmers provided  per cent of the nation’s
domestic food production. ‘We are tired of excuses in this Revolution’ he
declared.
Seven months later, on  July , Raúl extended his criticism, acknowledging
that state sector salaries were not adequate to cover basic consumption,
and that this shortfall was at the root of corruption. The only way to raise the
standard of living was to raise productivity. ‘No one, no individual or country,
can afford to spend more than what they have’, he reminded his audience.
‘It seems elementary, but we do not always think and act in accordance
with this inescapable reality.’ Over the next several years Raúl introduced a
sweeping programme of economic reform – or ‘updating’ of the economic
model, as the Cubans preferred to call it – including a wider use of market
mechanisms to boost Cuba’s anaemic productivity.
To Fidel, corruption and low productivity resulted from the people’s character
defects, exacerbated by the material incentives of the market. The solution
was to increase social control, decrease the scope of market activity,
and exhort people to work harder for the social good. To Raúl, Cuba’s problems
originated with defects in the model of socialism they had been pursuing.
The solution was to dispassionately re-examine that model, making
‘the needed structural and conceptual changes’. He closed his  July
speech by reiterating his earlier calls for more open debate. ‘We are dutybound
to question everything we do as we strive to materialise our will
more and more perfectly, to change concepts and methods which were appropriate
at one point but have been surpassed by life itself.’
Following Raúl’s speech, the party organised nationwide grassroots discussions
to identify obstacles to raising economic productivity and offer suggestions
on how to overcome them. Some  million people participated in
almost a quarter of a million meetings. Raúl’s frank criticism raised
popular expectations that the state was finally prepared to address the
nation’s manifest economic problems. Aware of the political risks involved,
Raúl tried to lower people’s expectations for quick fixes. ‘We would all like
to move faster, but that is not always possible’, he told the National
Assembly in December . ‘Nobody here is a magician or can pull resources
out of a hat.’

Gerardo Arreola, ‘Reprocha Raúl Castro el burocratismo y el maquillaje de cifras en la agricultura
cubana’, La Jornada (México, DF),  Dec. ; María Julia Mayoral, ‘Reclama
Raúl más rigor y transparencia’, Granma,  Dec. .

Raúl Castro, ‘The Revolution’s Most Important Weapon: The People’, Granma
International,  July .

‘Intervención del General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz …’, Juventude Rebelde,  Dec. .

Ibid.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
In February , Fidel Castro formally surrendered his position as president
when he declined to stand for re-election. He would continue to serve,
he said, as a ‘soldier in the Battle of Ideas’, commenting on current events
through his occasional editorial ‘Reflections’. Fidel began writing his reflections
in March , immediately establishing himself as Cuba’s pundit-itchief.
Every few days, a new reflection appeared on the front page of
Granma. Cubans and foreigners alike eagerly plumbed the texts for any hint
of disagreement between the Castro brothers. As Raúl’s critique of Cuba’s
economic model intensified and he replaced top officials appointed by Fidel,
speculation was rife that Fidel must be unhappy, and that the slow, deliberate
pace of change must be a result of Fidel leaning on the brakes. The elder
Castro’s presence hung ‘like a Sword of Damocles’ over his successors, according
to the BBC. That brought forth a scathing reply from Fidel, who insisted
that Raúl was fully in charge. If there were disagreements, the two brothers
kept them to themselves. But in the face of the obvious problems facing the
Cuban economy, in  even Fidel was moved to admit, ‘The Cuban
model doesn’t even work for us anymore.’
Raúl’s grand strategy for the economy was unveiled in conjunction with the
Sixth Congress of the Communist Party in April ,  years after the Fifth
Congress and nine years behind schedule. The Congress would ‘concentrate
on the solution of problems in the economy and on the fundamental decisions
for updating the Cuban economic model’, Raúl declared in November .
Other issues would be taken up later at a National Conference of the Party.
In the months preceding the Congress, local party branches convened more
than , meetings of members and non-members alike, with almost
 million participants, to discuss the leadership’s strategy for economic renovation,
embodied in the ‘Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of
the Party and the Revolution’. Of the  proposals for ‘updating’ the
economy, the most frequently discussed – and most controversial –
dealt with things affecting people’s everyday life – the proposals to phase
out the ration book, to eliminate the dual currency and to improve basic

‘Message from the Commander in Chief’,  Feb. , Discursos e intervenciones del
Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, available at www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/.

James C. McKinley Jr., ‘Cuba’s Revolution Lurches Forward Under Two Masters’,
New York Times,  July ; ‘Reflections by Comrade Fidel: I Hope I Never Have a
Reason to Be Ashamed’, Reflexiones del Comandante en Jefe, available at www.cuba.cu/
gobierno/reflexiones/reflexiones.html.

Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Fidel: “Cuban Model Doesn’t Even Work For Us Anymore”’, The
Atlantic,  Sept. .

‘Discurso pronunciado … en el Acto Conmemorativo del Décimo Aniversario del Convenio
Integral de Cooperación Cuba-Venezuela, … el  de noviembre de ’, Discursos e intervenciones
del Presidente … Raúl Castro Ruz, available at www.cuba.cu/gobierno/
Raúldiscursos/index.html.
 William M. LeoGrande
services like transportation, healthcare and education. A revised version of
the guidelines was approved at the April  Communist Party Congress.
The guidelines presented the basic framework of an economic model in
which the state plays a much less dominant role. This new model was less centralised,
more reliant on market mechanisms to boost productivity, and envisioned
a greater role for both foreign direct investment and the domestic
private enterprise. The ‘non-state sector’– private enterprises and cooperatives –
were treated as a permanent and dynamic part of the economy, not just a
barely tolerated appendage. Before the reform process began, only  per
cent of the labour force was employed in the non-state sector, almost exclusively
by private farms; by the end of , that had risen to  per cent,
and Cuban economists predict that by , it will be as much as  per
cent. In preparing its political strategy to sell the guidelines, the party emphasised,
‘leaving behind prejudices against non-state sectors of the economy’– an
imperative aimed as much at its own cadre as at the general population.
In addition, the state would no longer serve as the paternalistic provider of
all forms of consumption. ‘People cannot expect that “Papa State” is going to
solve their problems for them’, declared Comandante Ramiro Valdés, Minister
of Information and Communication. The ration card, which since  had
subsidised basic goods for everyone, whether they needed it or not, would be
replaced by income support for the poor. Cuba could no longer afford to
provide goods at what Raúl called ‘ridiculous prices’. Rationing had become
‘an intolerable burden on the economy and discouraged work’, not to
mention fuelling the black market. The state also would eliminate a broad
range of other ‘unwarranted handouts and excessive subsidies’, of which
there were so many that in  Raúl complained he could not even get a complete
inventory. Although health care and education would remain free, even
these crown jewels of the Revolution would have to be subject to the state’s
ability to pay.
In short, the new model aimed to reconnect people’s standard of living to
their productivity. ‘Socialism means social justice and equality but equality of

‘Central Report to the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba’, Granma
International,  April .

Partido Comunista de Cuba, Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido y la
Revolución,  April .

Marc Frank, ‘Cuba Makes More Reforms to Retail Sector’, Reuters,  Dec. .

‘National Conference Convocation’, Granma International,  April .

Agence France Presse, ‘Gobierno pide a cubanos no esperar que “papá Estado” les resuelva
todo’,  Sept. . Author’s translation.

‘Central Report to the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba’, Granma
International,  April .

‘Socialism Signifies Social Justice and Equality, but Equality Is Not Egalitarianism’, Granma
International,  July .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
rights and opportunities, not salaries’, Raúl told the National Assembly in
July . ‘Equality does not mean egalitarianism’. At the same time,
Raúl repeatedly reassured people that no one would be left behind. ‘In
Cuba, under socialism, there will never be space for ‘shock therapies’ that
go against the neediest, who have traditionally been the staunchest supporters
of the Revolution … The Revolution will not leave any Cuban helpless.’
Instead, help would be provided ‘to those who really need it’.
As a package, these reforms look very much like the early stages of Vietnam’s
Doi Moi (‘renovation’) reforms, begun in , aimed at creating a ‘socialistoriented
market economy’, and Deng Xiaoping’s  reforms aimed at building
‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. With a smile, a retired Cuban
official described the Cuban model as ‘socialism with Cuban characteristics’.
Indeed, the parallels to China’s path to market socialism are substantial.
Agriculture has undergone de facto privatisation, with state farms turned
into cooperatives and most cooperatives divided into family plots. Small
businesses are expanding rapidly in the retail and services sector. A new
foreign direct investment law and special free trade zones offer competitive
terms in hopes of attracting up to US$ billion annually. Most importantly,
state enterprises are facing the stark choice of becoming efficient (i.e. profitable)
or closing their doors. As in China, many of the new initiatives have been
preceded by pilot projects to test their viability, both economic and political.
However, the Cubans intend to maintain state ownership of the largest
enterprises and continue to direct national development by allocating investment
through the economic plan. And unlike China, they are determined to
maintain the achievements of the Revolution – free health care, education and
social security – and to limit the extent to which economic restructuring produces
extreme inequality. ‘I was not elected president to restore capitalism in
Cuba nor to surrender the Revolution’, Raúl reminded the National Assembly

Ibid.

‘Central Report to the Sixth Congress’.

Richard Newfarmer and Dana M. Liu, ‘Adapting to Globalization: Lessons from China’, in
Claes Brundenius and John Weeks (eds.), Globalization and Third-World Socialism: Cuba
and Vietnam (New York: Palgrave, ), pp. –; John Weeks, ‘A Tale of Two
Transitions: Cuba and Vietnam’, in Brundenius and Weeks (eds.), Globalization and
Third-World Socialism, pp. –.

The literature assessing Raúl’s economic reforms is vast and growing. See Omar Everleny
Pérez Villanueva (ed.), Cincuenta años de la economía cubana (La Habana: Editorial
Ciencias Sociales, ); Jorge I. Domínguez, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, Mayra
Espina Prieto (eds.), Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and
Challenges in the st Century (Cambridge: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
Studies, ); Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López, Cuba Under Raúl Castro:
Assessing the Reforms (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, ); Rafael Hernández y Jorge I.
Domínguez (eds.), Cuba, la actualización del modelo: balance y perspectiva de la transición
socialista (La Habana-Washington, DC: Ediciones Temas y David Rockefeller Center For
Latin American Studies, ).
 William M. LeoGrande
in , rather, ‘I was elected to defend, maintain and continue improving
socialism, not to destroy it.’
The Political Challenge of Economic Transformation
Raúl’s ambitious economic policy generated new hope among many Cubans,
as well as some anxiety. If it stalls or fails, popular disillusionment will be enormous,
dealing a severe blow to the regime’s legitimacy just as new, untested
leaders are taking over. The greatest threat to the economic reforms comes
from within the regime itself. The economic guidelines face significant opposition
from entrenched bureaucrats in the government and party whose privileges
are at risk. Some are resisting out of an ideological commitment and
a fear that reliance on the market is a step down the slippery slope toward
restoring capitalism. As Fidel said in his speech at the University of
Havana, the idea ‘that socialism could be constructed with capitalist
methods … is one of the great historical errors’. Bureaucrats, however, are
defending their self-interest; along with administrative power over the
economy comes access to various privileges, both legal and illegal.
The ability of bureaucrats to resist change by slow-walking reforms is
nothing new. A programme to rationalise state enterprises introduced in
 had reached fewer than one-third by the time Raúl became president
in . In the countryside, bureaucrats in charge of the state’s agricultural
procurement system sabotaged the market-oriented reforms Raúl introduced
after he became acting president. ‘[They] think that if they apply these
reforms, they will lose their position and power, and the advantages and privileges
they now enjoy’, a member of an agricultural co-op told journalist
Marc Frank. In , Raúl warned recalcitrant bureaucrats that he would

Speech delivered by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz … during the closing ceremony of the
Sixth Session of the Seventh Legislature of the National People’s Power Assembly,  Dec.
, available at www.cuba.cu/gobierno/rauldiscursos/index.html.

Rafael Hernández, ‘Revolution,/Reform, and Other Cuban Dilemmas’, Socialism and
Democracy, :  (), pp. –; Jorge Mario Sánchez, ‘Challenges of Economic
Restructuring in Cuba’, Socialism and Democracy, :  ().

Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, ‘Cuba’s New Socialism: Different Visions Shaping Current
Changes’, Latin American Perspectives, :  (), pp. –.

This problem crippled similar economic reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
See, for example, Wlodzimierz Brus, ‘The East European Reforms: What Happened to
Them?’, Soviet Studies, :  (), pp. –; Andrzej Korbonski, ‘The Politics of
Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe: The Last Thirty Years’, Soviet Studies, : 
(), pp. –; Ed A. Hewitt, ‘Economic Reform in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and
China: The Politics of Economics’, American Economic Review, :  (), pp. –.

Marc Frank, Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana (Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, ), p. .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
not tolerate inaction: ‘We shall be patient but also persevering in the face of
resistance to change, whether conscious or unconscious. I warn that any
bureaucratic resistance to the strict fulfillment of the [economic guidelines],
massively supported by the people, is useless.’
To assure that the new policies would not become a dead letter like so many
earlierones,RaúlcreatedtheCouncilofState’sstandingcommissiononimplementation
of the guidelines (Comisión Permanente para la Implementación y
Desarrollo), headed by Vice-President Marino Murillo. At every semi-annual
session, the National Assembly reviewed implementation progress, and the
party’s Central Committee did the same at its semi-annual plenaries. Even the
party’s Political Bureau established a commission that met weekly to track progress
on the guidelines. Raúl did not hesitate to demonstrate that he was serious about
accountability. In September , with the economic reform process lagging and
economic growth falling belowtargets, Raúl demotedthe Minister of Economy and
Planning,and gave Vice-PresidentMurillothat portfolioaswell,a move widelyseen
asanattempttoovercomebureaucraticresistance. AsnotedbyRafaelHernández,
‘The bureaucracy opposes reforms … in its slowness to implement the measures
already adopted. This inertia … in which the bureaucracy drags its feet … is
perhaps the most difficult thing to change.’
Failure of the new economic policy to raise productivity and incomes could
deal a serious blow to regime legitimacy. But even the success will bring new
political challenges. In an economy driven as much by the market’s demand
for efficiency as by the ideals of the Revolution’s founders, can Cuba maintain
the values of social justice that motivated the Revolution in  and have
been at its ideological core ever since – values that have been a key component
of regime legitimacy? A number of the proposed economic reforms put vulnerable
populations at risk. Despite Raúl’s promise not to subject Cuba to ‘shock
therapy’, if market forces are given freer rein, Cuba’s income disparities are

‘The Greatest Obstacle that We Face in Fulfilling the Agreements of the Sixth Congress Is
the Psychological Barrier Created by Inertia …’, Granma International,  Aug. .

Leticia Martínez Hernández and Yaima Puig Meneses, ‘Los dirigentes partidistas tienen que
ver los problemas y avizorar el futuro’, Granma,  July .

‘Marino Murillo, nuevo Ministro de Economía y Planificación’, Granma,  Sept. ;
Daniel Trotta, ‘Cuban Cabinet Change Aims to Boost Flagging Economy’, Reuters, 
Sept. .

Rafael Hernández, ‘The Collapse of Socialism Is Beyond the Present Horizon’, in Philip
Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk and William M. LeoGrande (eds.),
A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, ), pp. –. For a debate on the need for bureaucracy (i.e. institutional
rather than personalistic governance) versus its dangers, see Rafael Hernández, Ovidio
D’Angelo, Ivette Gálvez y Andry Matilla, ‘La burocracia como fenómeno social’, Último
Jueves, espacio de debate de la Revista Temas, marzo de , available at www.temas.cult.
cu/debates/libro%/-%burocracia.pdf.
 William M. LeoGrande
sure to increase, as they noticeably have already. There are winners and losers.
Those who are well-educated, live in cities where economic development is
more dynamic, and have access to hard currency are well-positioned to
thrive in a freer economic environment. Those who are low-skilled or
elderly, have no relatives abroad to send remittances, or suffer from racial discrimination
are all at risk. The government has pledged to maintain the collective
welfare system of which the Revolution was most proud, including
free health care, free education and social security. But other state subsidies
for consumers have begun to be phased out.
Demanding efficiency of state enterprises meant that as many as a million
state sector workers –  per cent of the labour force – will be laid off. Few
of them had the skills or capital to launch a small business. Implementation
of a plan in  to lay off , in just six months was slowed because
there was no place for them to go. Concern about the social dislocation
that will inevitably accompany such a radical economic shift is clearly on
the minds of Cuba’s leaders. The pace of change will be slow and steady,
‘in order not to err’ Raúl explained in . ‘To those [who] are encouraging
us to move faster, we say that we will continue without haste, but in a
measured way, with our feet planted firmly on the ground.’
The ‘evolutionary strategy’ Cuba’s leaders have adopted means that the
economic transformation will take years to complete. Thus far, the political
system seems to have managed the political fallout among the population effectively.
There have been no street protests and no noticeable increase is support
for dissident organisations. People’s hope that the changes will improve their
living standard still outweighs their fears. Going forward, the government
needs to deliver on that promise, lest raised expectations turn into disappointment
and resentment.

On increasing inequality, see Mayra Espina Prieto, Políticas de atención a la pobreza y la desigualdad:
examinando el rol del estado en la experiencia cubana (Buenos Aires: CLACSO,
); Espina Prieto, ‘Desigualdad y política social en Cuba hoy’, paper presented at a conference
‘TheFutureofSocialJusticeinCuba’,BellagioConferenceCenterMay–,,available
at http://focal.ca/pdf/cuba_Espina%Prieto_desigualdad%politica%social%Cuba%
hoy_May%-%_Bellagio.pdf; María del Carmen Zabala Argüelles, ‘Poverty and
Vulnerability in Cuba Today’, Socialism and Democracy, :  (), pp. –,; Zabala
Argüelles, ‘Análisis de la dimensión racial en los procesos de reproducción de la pobreza’, in
Zablada (ed.), Pobreza, exclusión social y discriminación étnico-racial en América Latina y el
Caribe (Bogotá: CLACSO, ), pp. –.

‘Our Greatest Satisfaction Is the Tranquility and Calm Confidence We Feel Handing over
the Responsibility of Continuing to Build Socialism to New Generations’, Granma
International,  Feb. .

On the evolutionary approach to economic reform in centrally-planned economies as contrasted
to the more rapid approach known as ‘shock therapy’, see M. March-Poquet,
‘What Type of Transition is Cuba Undergoing?’ Post-Communist Economies, : , –.

Frank, Cuban Revelations, pp. –.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
Social and Political Decompression
In Eastern European communist regimes, the successors to regime founders
sought to meet the challenge of sustaining regime legitimacy by appealing to
culturally resonant themes, especially nationalism, and allowing modest political
and cultural liberalisation. A similar trend toward social and political
decompression is already visible in Cuba.
A number of the early reforms instituted by Raúl Castro involved simply
repealing unnecessary regulations that ordinary Cubans found especially exasperating.
In , the government legalised the sale of computers and cell
phones, and eliminated rules against Cubans staying in tourist hotels or
renting cars. In , it legalised private real estate and automobile markets,
allowing Cubans to buy and sell directly to one another. In , it eliminated
the carta blanca, the exit permit required for travel abroad, allowing Cubans
with a valid passport to travel whenever and wherever they liked. The government
was getting out of the business of trying to manage every social interaction
between its citizens.
In one of his first speeches as acting president, in December , Raúl
argued for more open, democratic debate. ‘Argue, analyse, disagree’, he
urged, ‘because the more you argue, the more you disagree … out of these disagreements
will always come the best solutions’. He made the same point
two years later to the National Assembly. Disagreement was far better than
‘false unanimity based on pretence and opportunism’ he said, adding that
the right to disagree was ‘a right nobody should be deprived of’.
Cuba’s intelligentsia took full advantage of the new openness. Fidel had
famously defined revolution as, ‘changing everything that needs to be
changed’ – a phrase frequently invoked by Raúl and others to justify the sweeping
changes implied in the Economic and Social guidelines. Writers, artists,
academics and an incipient community of bloggers launched a freewheeling
debate about just exactly what needed to be changed. Periodicals like
Témas and Espacio Laical, along with dozens of blogs, provided the venues,
sometimes even publishing the views of Cuban-American exiles.

Korbonski, ‘Leadership Succession and Political Change in Eastern Europe’.

‘Fidel es insustituible, salvo que lo sustituyamos todos juntos’, Juventude Rebelde,  Dec.
. Author’s translation.

Speech delivered by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz …, during the closing ceremony of the
Sixth Session of the Seventh Legislature of the National People’s Power Assembly,  Dec.
.

‘Speech by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz … [on] International Labor Day, May , ’, Discursos e
intervenciones del Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, available at http://www.cuba.cu/
gobierno/discursos/.

See, for example, the description of the  Congress of Artists and Writers in Frank,
Cuban Revelations, pp. –.
 William M. LeoGrande
In , the government got an inkling of how hard it would be to put this
genie back in the bottle. Cuban television featured interviews with three cultural
officials who were notorious for enforcing ideological orthodoxy during
the ‘Grey Years’ of –, a time when a number of leading artists and
writers were censored and persecuted. Fearing that the reappearance of these
apparatchiks foreshadowed a new crackdown, Cuban intellectuals launched
an ‘email war’ of protest. Their response was so intense that Minister of
Culture Abel Prieto (generally regarded as responsible for expanding the
space for cultural criticism over the preceding decade) met with many of
them privately to provide reassurance. In public he called the television interviews
‘a mistake’ and reaffirmed that the leadership still regarded the Grey
Years ‘with great disapproval’.
Improved relations with the Catholic Church also signalled the regime’s
greater tolerance for civil society institutions outside its control. Although
the government’s rapprochement with the Church began in the s, it
reached a high point in  when Raúl Castro and Cardinal Jaime Ortega
entered into discussions about the treatment of the dissident group, Ladies
in White, and about the release of political prisoners. On  July, the
Cardinal’s office announced that the government would release  political
prisoners, including all those who were still imprisoned as a result of the
 crackdown on dissidents. Over the course of the next few weeks, the
government agreed to release even more prisoners, with the total eventually
reaching . The Cuban government’s willingness to treat the Catholic
Church as a legitimate counter-party in a dialogue on human rights was unprecedented.
As Ortega said, the government had ‘recognized the role of the
Church as an interlocutor’ with civil society in a way that it had never
done previously.
‘We did it in the framework of a dialogue based on mutual respect, loyalty
and transparency with the senior leadership of the Catholic Church’, Raúl
said, explaining this dialogue to the  Party Congress. ‘With this action,
we have favoured the consolidation of the most precious legacy of our
history and the revolutionary process: the unity of our nation.’ The theme

Exchanges in the email war are posted on http://www.desdecuba.com/polemica/index.shtml.

Arturo García Hernández, ‘La política cultural de Cuba, sin dogmas ni sectarismos’, La
Jornada (México),  Feb. . See Adam Simpson, ‘Civil Society in the Digital Age:
How the Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of
Cuba’, in Civil Society Activism Under Authoritarian Rule: A Comparative Perspective, in
Francesco Cavatorta (ed.) (New York: Routledge, ), pp. –.

Marc Lacey, ‘Cuban Government Vows to Release  Prisoners’, New York Times,  July
; Will Weissert, ‘Cuba Agrees to Free  Political Prisoners’, Associated Press,  July
.

Marc Frank, ‘Castro in First Church Overtures’, Financial Times,  May .

‘Central Report to the Sixth Congress’.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
of national unity appeared frequently in Raúl’s public statements, indicating a
recognition that the economic changes upon which they were embarking held
the potential to generate division and opposition. To reinforce regime legitimacy,
Raúl focused first and foremost on improving economic performance,
but at the same time he appealed to culturally resonant themes, especially
nationalism. As Raúl told the National Party Conference in , the political
requisite for economic success was ‘to strengthen national unity around the
Party and the Revolution … and to consolidate the conviction of preserving
the Cuban nation and socioeconomic achievements, on the basis of the idea
that homeland, revolution and socialism are indissolubly fused’.
The state’s reaction to the emergence of Cuba’s online community of bloggers
and their intense – not always civil – debates, was more ambivalent than its attitude
toward the Church. With a highly educated labour force, Cuba has regarded
information technology as an area of potential economic growth and international
competitiveness. In , it opened the University of Information
Sciences, enrolling some , students and over  million young people participate
in over  Computer Youth Clubs. From this investment, a robust and
growing community of bloggers has emerged, including, most famously, Yoani
Sánchez. Her ‘Generación Y’ blog offers an acerbic look at daily life in Cuba,
winning Sánchez international acclaim – and the hostility of Cuban officialdom
(which she regularly lampoons). But the cyber-terrain of Cuban politics covers
the gamut from adamant supporters of the regime to adamant opponents.
Cuban authorities recognised the power of the Internet. In , Raúl
Castro named Ramiro Valdés, former Minister of the Interior, as Cuba’s
new Minister of Communications and Information. While acknowledging
that digital technology was essential for Cuba to ‘continue to advance down
the path of development’, Valdés warned that it also provided the United
States with powerful new tools to ‘bring the destabilizing power of the
empire to threatening new levels’. Cyberspace, he argued, had to be understood
as a ‘battlefield’ in the struggle against imperialism; the Internet,
‘the wild colt of new technologies, can and must be controlled’. The government
blocked certain sites and cut off Internet access to certain bloggers when

Raúl Castro, ‘Our Responsibility Is to Promote Greater Democracy in Our Society,
Beginning by Providing an Example Within the Ranks of the Party’, Granma
International,  Jan. .

John Rice, ‘Cuba Joins Other Latin Nations in Shift Toward Open-source Software’,
Associated Press,  Feb. ; Dalia Acosta, ‘High Tech: Cuba Turns to Venezuela to
Solve Internet Woes’, Inter Press Service,  Feb. .

Ted A. Henken, Sjamme van de Voort and Ellery Biddle, ‘From Cyberspace to Public Space?
The Emergent Blogosphere and Cuban Civil Society’, in Brenner et al., A Contemporary
Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl, pp. –.

John Rice, ‘Cuban Official Defends Internet Controls Associated Press Online’, Associated
Press,  Feb. .
 William M. LeoGrande
their commentary ran afoul of the authorities’ sense of propriety. But the parameters
of what was acceptable were unclear and shifting.
In , amidst a controversy about the censorship of an independent yet
generally pro-government blog, La Joven Cuba, at the University of Matanzas,
Cuba’s new First Vice-President, Miguel Díaz-Canel, weighed in on the side of
allowing open debate online, for the simple reason that in the long run, the
state could not control it anyway. ‘Today, with the development of information
technology, social networking, computing, and the Internet, banning
something is almost an impossible illusion. It makes no sense’, he explained.
‘Today, the news from all sides, good and bad, manipulated and true, and
half-true, circulates on the networks, reaches people, people are aware of it.’
No one should mistake this limited social and political decompression for
democratisation. There is no prospect in the near future for a move away
from a one party system. As Raúl told the Communist Party  National
Conference, ‘Renouncing the principle of one sole party would simply be
the equivalent of legalizing the party or parties of imperialism in our homeland’.
Yet the flood-gates of criticism opened by Raúl’s own critique of
the government’s past practices, combined with the leadership’s desire for
national consensus around the economic reform process, has already produced
more political space ‘within the revolution’ than ever before.
Generational Transition
How would the Cuban regime fare when the founding revolutionary generation
(los históricos) finally left the political stage? The puzzle of generational
succession was a common one in communist systems – one that China finally
solved and the Soviet Union did not. Cuba’s leaders had been talking about

Dalia Acosta, ‘Cuba: More Bloggers Are Firing off Thoughts from the Island IPS – Inter
Press Service’,  Oct. ; David Adams, ‘Cuban Dissent Finds Voice on Internet,’
St. Petersburg Times (Florida),  Feb. .

Henken, van de Voort and Biddle, ‘From Cyberspace to Public Space?’

‘La prensa cubana silencia la “crítica al silencio” de Miguel Díaz-Canel’,  May , La
Chiringa de Cuba, available at www.chiringadecuba.com/la-prensa-cubana-silencia-lacritica-al-silencio-de-miguel-diaz-canel-vide/.
Author’s translation.

Quoted in Frank, Cuban Revelations, p. .

Setting the ground rules for legitimate debate, Fidel Castro famously declared in ,
‘Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing’. Over the years,
however, what was considered ‘within’ the revolution has varied considerably, and not
always predictably. Fidel Castro, ‘Words to the Intellectuals’, in Fidel Castro Reader
(Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, ), pp. –.

Gang Lin, ‘Leadership Transition, Intra-party Democracy, and Institution Building in
China’, Asian Survey, :  (), pp. –; Valerie Bunce and Philip G. Roeder,
‘The Effects of Leadership Succession in the Soviet Union’, American Political Science
Review, :  (), pp. –.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
the need to plan for this succession for a long time. As early as , Fidel
Castro highlighted the issue in his closing speech to the Third Congress of
the Communist Party. Yet little was done to effectively prepare a new generation
of leaders. Fidel’s strategy of elevating his favourite young cadres to
positions of national authority without giving them the experience they
needed repeatedly ended in failure.
In January , nine months after the Sixth Party Congress adjourned, 
of the Congress delegates reconvened for the First National Party Conference.
Their purpose was, first and foremost, to develop a plan of political work to
support implementation of the new economic guidelines. Additionally, the leadership
sought to revitalise the party by repairing the weaknesses that had
developed over the preceding decade in order to prepare for the inevitable generational
succession.
The basic document informing the conference’s work laid out a number of
these shortcomings: the party had been drawn into the administration of state
agencies, thereby neglecting its political work. Its endless meetings had degenerated
into ‘formalism’, in which no real criticism was ever voiced and little
was accomplished, thereby ‘spreading dissatisfaction and apathy’ among the
membership. Its cadres too often lacked creativity, failed to take the initiative
in problem-solving, took a lax attitude toward ‘violations and indiscipline’ and
sometimes fell prey to corruption themselves. The party’s ‘rapid promotion of
immature and inexperienced cadres’ had produced serious policy errors and
failures. Finally, the party had ‘lacked the political will’ to promote
women, Afro-Cubans and youth into leadership positions based on their
merits. ‘It’s really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in
more than half a century’, Raúl reported to the Sixth Party Congress.
For all the talk about the need to replace los históricos with a new generation
of leaders, the new Political Bureau elected at the Sixth Congress was
not very different. Among its  members were only one woman, two AfroCubans
and only two people under the age of . Clearly the veterans were
not quite ready to leave the barricades. Speaking for his generation, Raúl
said, ‘We strongly believe that we have the elemental duty to correct the mistakes
that we have made all along these five decades during which we have
[been] building socialism in Cuba.’

Jorge Domínguez, ‘Political Succession in Cuba’, Third World Quarterly, : , (),
pp. –.

Partido Comunista de Cuba, Objectivos de Trabajo del Partido Comunista de Cuba Aprobados
por la Primera Conferencia,  Jan. .

‘Central Report to the Sixth Congress’.

Speech delivered by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz … during the closing ceremony of the
Sixth Session of the Seventh Legislature of the National People’s Power Assembly,  Dec.
.
 William M. LeoGrande
The new Central Committee, however, was significantly more diverse. Among
its  members,  were women ( per cent, up from  per cent previously)
and  were of African descendant ( per cent, up from  per cent). Although
no data on the Committee’s average age was released, Castro noted that a large
number of young professionals had been added to its ranks. The National
Assembly and Council of State elected in  saw similar changes. Women
members comprised  per cent of the Assembly, up from  per cent, and
Afro-Cubans comprised  per cent, up from  per cent. The average age of delegates
was . Of the Council of State’s  members,  per cent were women, 
Afro-Cuban and  were born after the triumph of the Revolution.
To hasten the transition to a new generation of leaders, the party adopted
term limits reminiscent of those in China: senior leaders could serve no more
than two consecutive five-year terms. In his speech to the National Assembly
on  February , Raúl Castro formally announced that he would retire in
 at the end of his second presidential term. He also announced the retirement
of several elderly comrades-in-arms, including First Vice-President José
Machado Ventura. In his place, the Assembly elected -year-old Miguel
Díaz-Canel, putting a leader born after the Revolution in the direct line of political
succession for the first time.
As Cuba’s revolutionary generation passes from the scene, the idealists who
fought against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship are being replaced by bureaucrats
whose claim on the heroic past is tenuous. Fewer and fewer people even remember
the hardships of pre-revolutionary society. As managers replace visionaries,
ideological ardour cools and the young take the Revolution’s accomplishments
for granted, seeing only its failures. In this, Cuba’s Revolution is no different
from those in Russia, China and Vietnam.
The political risk inherent in generational succession and its linkage to the
regime’s economic performance was summed up by Francisco Soberón, the
president of Cuba’s National Bank, in . Noting that the ‘poor functioning
of the economy’ was a major cause of the collapse of European communism,
he warned of the need to reform the economy sooner rather than later.
We have a colossal safeguard of Socialism that is our faith in our people, in Fidel and
Raúl. But if we do not manage to continue to increase the standard of living of the
population and guarantee a programme of sustainable development we are running
the risk that these great personalities will become the only pillar that maintains the
system.

Dalia Acosta, ‘Raúl Castro Proposes Change from Within Socialist System’, Inter Press
Service,  April .

‘Our Greatest Satisfaction Is the Tranquility and Calm Confidence We Feel Handing over
the Responsibility of Continuing to Build Socialism to New Generations’, Granma
International,  Feb. .

Ibid.

Frank, Cuban Reveleations, .
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
Conclusion
Scholars who have looked beyond the technical details of Cuba’s economic
restructuring to assess its political implications have tended to focus exclusively
on whether the new economic policy is likely to succeed or fail. Thus Carmelo
Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López, who are sceptical of the reforms’ economic
viability, see political trouble ahead unless the reforms are deepened. Emily
Morris, on the other hand, concludes that Cuban economic policy since the
collapse of the Soviet Union has been rational and largely successful, so she
sees little reason to expect political crisis. Haroldo Dilla criticises the
reforms from the left, predicting failure for lack of democratic participation.
But none of these analyses addresses the interplay of the economic transition’s
political implications with the ongoing decompression of civil society and the
impending generational transition. The coincidence of these processes will
magnify the political ramifications of the economic changes, especially if the
reform process is unsuccessful.
Economic change is already reshaping Cuba’s political terrain. As market
reforms weaken the scope of state and party control over the economy, the
regime’s political monopoly becomes frayed as well, leading to what Jorge
Domínguez has identified as ‘post-totalitarian’ Cuba. This creates what
an observer of Eastern Europe called ‘islands of autonomy’ in civil society
which serve as ‘safe spaces’ within which people forge new social relationships
and networks of communication, acquire consciousness of their common interests
and develop the capacity for politics outside the regime. Emergent entrepreneurs,
both farmers and small businessmen, depend less and less on the state
for their well-being. As they accumulate wealth and grow increasingly indispensable
to the health of the economy, their desire for less government interference
is certain to take a more explicitly political direction. Concomitantly, as income
disparities grow, disadvantaged Cubans are unlikely to remain silent, as the
surge in Afro-Cuban cultural and political complaints about lingering racism
demonstrates. In Eastern Europe, Communist governments relied on a
‘social pact’ to maintain social peace: the state provided cradle-to-grave social

Mesa-Lago and Pérez-López, Cuba Under Raúl Castro; Emily Morris, ‘Unexpected Cuba’,
New Left Review,  (), pp. –; Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, ‘La dirección y los límites de
los cambios’, Nueva Sociedad,  (), pp. –.

Jorge I. Domínguez, ‘Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba’, Encuentro
/ (), p. .

The concept of ‘islands of autonomy’ is from Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The
Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State (New York: Cambridge University
Press, ). On how economic reforms in a centrally planned economy can lead to
social pluralism, setting the stage for political change, see David Stark, ‘Entrepreneurs on
the Road to Post-Communism’, Contemporary Sociology, :  (), pp. –. An application
to the Cuban case is Jorge I. Domínguez, ‘Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo
en Cuba’, Encuentro –, (), pp. –.
 William M. LeoGrande
welfare benefits and the population tolerated the state’s authoritarianism. But
when the state defaulted on its end of the bargain, those highly educated populations
rose up.
Thus there is an urgency to Cuba’s economic reform programme, not only
because of external exigencies (like the tenuous state of the Venezuelan government
and Cuba’s balance of payments problems), but also because of the
impending generational change in  when Raúl and, presumably, other
long-serving históricos are slated to retire. Without Raúl at helm, it will be
easier for bureaucrats to stall reforms that threaten their power, and it will
be harder to sustain elite consensus on tough issues. Key elements of the
reforms are more likely to fail if they have not already been implemented
and proved their economic and political benefit.
If elite stalemate stalls the reform process, the public is unlikely to remain as
passive as it has through past policy failures and disappointments. As Cubans
interact with populations abroad, through tourism, family visits, professional
cooperation, the danger of ‘ideological contamination’ increases. Intellectuals
are already pushing the bounds of legitimate debate, demanding a more inclusive
definition of what counts as ‘within the revolution’ and pushing back at any
hint of retrogression. NGOs have proliferated, creating new social networks
independent of state supervision and control. The vital social and spiritual
role played by the Catholic Church – the only significant social institution
outside the government’s control – has given the Church a major social presence,
with political implications that the government has only recently come
to recognise. The spread of the Internet is putting a new generation of
Cubans in touch with each other and the wider world in ways the government
cannot control.
The government can try to quell these stirrings, but it cannot eliminate
them because they are the unavoidable by-product of the economic changes
now underway. This complex political panorama will not be easy for
Cuba’s leaders to manage, and they have fewer levers of power than ever
before. The future of the revolutionary regime Fidel and Raúl Castro
founded in  will depend on whether it can adapt to these emergent
social and political forces, updating Cuba’s political as well as its economic
model.
Cuba avoided the fate of the European communist regimes in –
because Cuban nationalism was directed against its capitalist enemy, the United
States, not against its socialist ally, the Soviet Union. Cuba’s Revolution was
authentically indigenous, not a product of occupation by the Soviet Red Army.

Gail Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern
Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, ). For a discussion of the social pact in
Cuba, see ‘Cuba: ¿hacia un nuevo pacto social?’, Espacio Laical suplemento digital, abril
, available at http://espaciolaical.org/contens/esp/sd_.pdf.
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era
In , the Cuban Revolution’s ideologicalcommitment to socialjusticewasstill
real in practice and widely supported. And the founding revolutionary generation
still held power, embodying the original legitimacy that the Revolution enjoyed.
But while the prognosticators of the regime’s imminent demise were wrong
in , Cuba’s socialist system is by no means out of the woods. It still suffers
from deficits in economic organisation and management that proved fatal for
European communism, with the resultant problems of low productivity, stagnant
standards of living and a heavy burden of international debt. To solve
these problems, it will not be enough to replicate the partial, timid economic
reforms of ‘goulash communism’ with which Eastern Europe experimented –
for the most part unsuccessfully – in the s and s.
Moreover, the advantages that Cuba enjoyed in  are wasting assets.
Cubans remain deeply nationalistic and proud of their independence, but as
the level of conflict with the United States diminishes, fear of the external
enemy will become a less potent glue binding the population’s loyalty to the
regime. Rising social inequality – an inevitable consequence of the increasing
reliance on market mechanisms – weakens the regime’s claim to social justice
as a legitimising ideological principle. Finally, the founders of the revolutionary
government will soon pass from the scene – in , if not before – leaving
their successors with the task of re-creating regime legitimacy on the basis of
performance. If Cuba has not gone far toward solving its contemporary economic
problems, those successors will be politically vulnerable.
Cuba under Raúl Castro is intent on making progress slowly, carefully calibrating
the economic and political ramifications of every new reform measure.
Yet there is, at the same time, an urgency to their task and a deadline for completion.
The pace of reform will need to quicken if, by , Cuba is too look
more like China than like Eastern Europe.
Spanish and Portuguese abstracts
Spanish abstract. En los años desde que Raúl Castro tomó el poder como presidente
luego de la enfermedad y retiro de Fidel Castro, Cuba se ha embarcado en cuatro transiciones
mayores casi de manera simultánea: una reestructuración de la toma de decisiones
de las élites; una transformación de la economía centralizada cubana hacia una
economía socialista de mercado; un relajamiento del fuerte control social, lo que ha
proveído una mayor autonomía social a la sociedad civil e incluso un cierto grado
de descompresión política; y, una transición de la generación de la élite política fundadora
(los históricos) a una generación sucesora, en donde ningún Castro tendrá el
poder. Cada uno de esos procesos contiene en sí mismo riesgos políticos.
Desarrollándose juntos, tales procesos constituyen el reto político más grande que el
régimen cubano ha enfrentado desde el colapso de la Unión Soviética.
Spanish keywords: sucesión de liderazgo, reforma económica, reforma política, Raúl
Castro, Cuba
 William M. LeoGrande
Portuguese abstract. Nos anos que se seguiram à posse de Raúl Castro como presidente,
após a enfermidade e a aposentadoria de Fidel Castro, Cuba deu início, quase que
simultaneamente, a quatro importantes transições: a reestruturação do processo
decisório das elites; a transformação de uma economia centralmente planejada para
uma economia socialista de mercado; um relaxamento do rígido controle social, possibilitando
uma autonomia maior da sociedade civil e até mesmo um relaxamento
político; e uma transição da geração fundadora da elite política (los históricos) para
uma geração sucessora, em um momento no qual nenhum dos irmãos Castro se
manterá no poder. Cada um desses processos implica em riscos políticos. Ao desdobrarem-se
conjuntamente, constituem o maior desafio político enfrentado pelo
regime cubano desde o colapso da União Soviética.
Portuguese keywords: sucessão de liderança, reforma econômica, reforma política, Raúl
Castro, Cuba
Cuba’s Perilous Political Transition to the Post-Castro Era