Word: cubans
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Whatever differences might exist between former Cuban President Fidel Castro and his younger brother, President Raúl Castro, the most important is style. Fidel values a fiery belly full of political ideology; Raúl prizes a cooler head equipped with administrative acumen. The latter has been at the forefront ever since the ailing Fidel, 82, ceded power to Raúl, 77, last year. But this week Raúl's m.o. emerged in ways that could eventually facilitate the tentative but growing efforts in Washington and Havana to end 50 years of hemispheric cold war and thaw...
...more flexible tone for Cuba's foreign policy apparatus. Perez Roque, 43, a former personal aide to Fidel, is a pugnacious communist doctrinaire often referred to as Fidel's pit bull, more suited to El Comandante's policy of confrontation with Washington. (He once called himself part of the Cuban "Taliban.") His successor, Bruno Rodriguez, who had been Perez Roque's No. 2, is by contrast a more bookish foreign service veteran, a former journalist who was Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations from 1995 to 2003. As such, he may be a better fit as Foreign Minister...
...shuffle takes place the same week that the U.S. Senate is voting whether to approve a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that includes a loosening of the embargo. One measure, which President Barack Obama promised during his 2008 campaign, would let Cuban Americans travel to Cuba once a year instead of only once every three years. Others would reverse regulations on sales of food and medicine to the island and ease payment conditions. Cuban-American Senators Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Mel Martinez of Florida oppose including the Cuba language in the bill, insisting that Havana first improve human...
...because they were Fidelistas but because "the honey of power" had infected them and "awakened in them ambitions" that made them "unworthy." After that the two men were compelled to resign their posts in the powerful Council of State and the even more important Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party...
...already consults a small core of foreign policy veterans on U.S. policy, including Jorge Bolaños, Cuba's de facto ambassador in Washington, and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, one of Cuba's most respected diplomats and the foreign relations point man inside the Cuban Communist Party's all-powerful Central Committee. Havanologists will be watching closely to see if Rodriguez becomes part of that circle...