Word: fidelity
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There was no surprise, Sunday, when Cuba's parliament elected Raul Castro, 76, to succeed his ailing, 81-year-old brother, Fidel, as President. But pundits who had expected an infusion of youth into Cuba's Paleolithic hierarchy were roundly disappointed. The six vice presidential posts, for example, were taken by a group of men whose average age is 70 - including 77-year-old, hard-line communist ideologue Jose Ramon Machado as First Vice President...
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s announcement this week that he no longer aspires to nor plans to seek the position of President at the Cuban National Assembly next week has elicited myriad reactions from the international community. Infamous for his cruel tactics and abysmal human rights record, Castro, now 81 years old, has stood for nearly fifty years at the helm of one of the most staunchly communist countries in the world (all while he battled with serious health problems over the past 18 months). As his brother Raúl prepares to officially take the reins next month...
With Raúl in charge, there's reason for some cautious hope. Compared with the flamboyantly inflexible Fidel, the beardless and bespectacled Raúl is an earthier, more pragmatic figure, who has nudged his country's ossified economy toward capitalism and encouraged some discussion about liberalizing its repressive politics. That's quite a turnaround for Raúl, who has been Cuba's military chief since Fidel took power in 1959 and was known as his brother's political enforcer, a ruthless ideological hard-liner. But after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's economic benefactor, it was Raúl who persuaded Fidel...
...have the power to fix that dysfunction. Fidel's full-blown retirement "really does free Raúl to do a lot more than he could in the provisional role," says Brian Latell, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami and author of After Fidel. "Now I think we'll see significant changes, not just in style but in policy." Bernardo Benes, a Miami banker and prominent Cuban exile who played soccer with Raúl at the University of Havana and was an emissary to Cuba for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, agrees: "I do expect him to free himself from...
...Here's another: failing to do so might risk buoying the very Fidelista hard-liners whose power Raúl has worked to undermine in the past year and a half. Not so long ago, it seemed the next generation of Cuban leaders would be an ideological cohort fiercely loyal to Fidel, known as los Taliban and led by Foreign Minister Felipe Peréz Roque, 42. But since Raúl took over as interim President, the likes of Peréz have seen their power checked while pragmatists like Vice President Carlos Lage, 56, who share Raúl's less dogmatic economic-policy vision, have...