By Monday, Cuba looks set to be without a Castro at the helm for the first time since Raúl and his brother Fidel swept down from the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1959, forcing the dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.
One of the last surviving members of that “historic generation”, Raúl has said he will relinquish his post as the supremely powerful first secretary during the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), which begins in Havana Friday.
The 89-year-old leaves a country queueing for food, wracked by the economic effects of coronavirus and US sanctions, and showing increasing signs of dissent.
A new song, Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) plays off the old slogan Patria o Muerte (Homeland or Death) and can be heard in taxis and on the streets, the rap: “It’s over, it’s 62 [years] hurting.” Its message – enough is enough – infuriated the authorities enough that they responded with their own, using the original slogan. It wasn’t as popular.
And yet, Raúl leaves on his own terms, in the middle of a Congress that comes together under the banner “continuity and unity”. He leaves having initiated economic and political reforms that – until the catastrophe of coronavirus – had begun, at least according to local economists, to turn the rusting ship of state around...
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