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...l's 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...
...question is whether Raúl is on the same page. Was his shake-up at Cuba's Foreign Ministry actually intended to encourage a U.S. change in Cuba policy? On the one hand, says Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington, "putting in someone who's a technocrat and not an ideologue will be perceived as a small sign of something positive in Washington." Then again, says Mora, it's difficult to tell if it also indicates that Raúl is "preparing himself for the eventuality of Washington making more of these gestures...
Indeed, Raúl, who until succeeding Fidel was Cuba's Defense Minister for almost five decades, placed numerous military brass loyal to him in key posts. They included General Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra as Secretary of the Council of Ministers, who replaces Carlos Lage, 57, a physician turned economics czar who is widely credited with seeing Cuba through the financially harrowing 1990s after the island lost its massive Soviet subsidies. Lage was often mentioned as a possible successor to Fidel...
Both Lage and Perez Roque are said to have fallen out of favor with Raúl. But Fidel, in an effort to dispel the widespread appearance of Raulismo vs. Fidelismo, published an essay in the state-run Cuba Debate a day after Raúl's changes in which he insisted that he had signed off on the ousters. In classic Fidel style - portraying fired officials as fallen communist angels - he wrote that Perez Roque and Lage were "liberated from their posts" not because they were Fidelistas but because "the honey of power" had infected them and "awakened...
Although he is considered a Raulista, Rodriguez remains a relatively unknown entity in the Castro hierarchy. As experts like Mora point out, it's too soon to tell if Raúl chose Rodriguez with a proactive U.S.-Cuba mission in mind or simply to have a professional but nondescript bureaucrat warm the Foreign Minster's seat. Raúl 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...