As pundits around the globe proclaimed the end of the Castro era this week, Cuba’s new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, promptly dismissed such a notion.



“Raúl Castro … will lead the decisions of greatest transcendence for the present and the future of this country,” said Díaz-Canel in a speech marking the official changing of the guard on Thursday.



After a 12-year run, Castro, 86, stepped down as president of the Cuban council of state and council of ministers, but he is not leaving the seat of power: he will remain the head of Cuba’s two most powerful institutions – the armed forces and the Communist party.

Think of it as chess move: from center stage to backstage, – always Raúl’s comfort zone – from where he will vigilantly watch the proceedings.



Unlike his brother Fidel, the Maximum Leader who craved the world stage, Raúl Castro was always a reluctant leading man. But as the founder and head of the Revolutionary Cuban Armed Forces, Raúl’s power was never in doubt.



Despite a natural allergy to the limelight, Raúl reigned as Cuba’s co-ruler for a half century. The brothers knew each other’s talents and limitations; together they were the most successful political brother act in history. .

Affable and deferential, Díaz-Canel formerly served as Raúl’s bodyguard, cementing a trusted relationship with both brothers. A former minister of higher education who diligently ascended through the party ranks, he favors casual dress and bicycling, and has supported gay rights.

Profile Who is Miguel Díaz-Canel? Show Career An electronics engineer by training, Díaz-Canel became party chief in his home province of Villa Clara in the 1990s. In 2003, he was moved to be party chief in Holguin province, a centre of Cuba's burgeoning tourism industry and foreign investment. In 2009, he was summoned to Havana to be higher education minister, and in 2013 Castro appointed him as first-vice president. Since then he has stood in for Castro at political events, received foreign dignitaries and travelled abroad on behalf of the government. Political views Díaz-Canel's policy views remain mostly an enigma in a country where political campaigning is banned. On the one hand he is from a younger generation of leaders and has advocated modernising Cuba; on the other he is a longtime Communist party apparatchik who is not expected to push for sweeping political change. As a young provincial party chief, he bucked party orthodoxy by backing an LGBT-friendly cultural centre in Santa Clara, reportedly listening to rock music and sporting long hair. At a national level, he called for more critical coverage of events in state-run media and broader internet access to open one of the world's least web-connected societies. Ultimately though, he appears to have earned Castro's trust by sticking to the party line on key political and economic issues, analysts say.

Personality While Díaz-Canel's public persona has been reserved, even dour, since he joined the national government nine years ago, residents in his home province of Villa Clara enthuse about him as a handsome, friendly "man of the people" who gets things done. Fuel was so scarce in the 1990s that he cycled to work wearing shorts instead of commuting by Soviet-made Lada like other party leaders, locals said. He has also been lauded for backing the Santa Clara culture centre at a time when homophobia was commonplace in the party. A music lover, Díaz-Canel would reportedly bring his two children from his first marriage to the centre's youth events, dancing there himself in the evenings. Reuters Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP

More importantly, he is not a showboater and evinces zero personal ambition – thus avoiding the kiss of death for several previous would-be Castro successors.

Díaz-Canel defines himself as a Raulista economic reformer, meaning he will continue loosening the state’s stranglehold on private enterprise – but slowly and cautiously. That may not be enough.

Raúl Castro aspired to be Cuba’s Deng Xiaoping. Despite his brother’s resistance, he revamped the country’s bankrupt communist model by tweaking it into a version of market socialism with limited private enterprise.

But he was never able to haul Cuba out of the red, despite billions in debt forgiveness. The country remains mired in a two-tier currency system that is deeply unpopular.

Since 1959, Cuba’s economic model – with its relatively generous health and education benefits – has depended upon having a patron. For decades, the Soviet Union picked up the country’s tab; Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela was even more obliging.

But after Chávez’s death and amid Venezuela’s spiraling collapse into a failed state, the economic pipeline has been reduced to a drip, and Cuba remains knee-deep in debt.

Díaz-Canel will probably find the seat of power a bit crowded. Although Fidel once said “Cuba is not a dynasty”, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Raúl has long served as the Castro family patriarch and the family remains his most innermost circle.

The decisive power players in Cuba will remain Raúl’s only son, Col Alejandro Castro Espín, 52, who heads intelligence and domestic security for the army and interior ministry; and Raúl’s son-in-law, Gen Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, married to though long separated from Raúl’s eldest child, Deborah.

The outgoing Cuban president, Raúl Castro, right, raises the arm of Cuba’s new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Photograph: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images

Clearly being groomed for the future, Alejandro has been at his father’s side during all significant meetings with foreign leaders, and served as the lead negotiator ahead of Cuba’s rapprochement with the US.

As the longtime chief of Gaesa, the economic behemoth of the army that controls the country’s major business interests and investments, Rodríguez functions as Cuba’s CEO.



Close by is Luis Alberto’s son, Raulito, 32, who has served as his grandfather’s bodyguard.

Raúl’s daughter, the outspoken Mariela Castro Espín, 55, is a member of the national assembly who has promoted LGBT rights. But unlike her brother, she is not a key political player.

None of Fidel’s sons are personally invested in politics, even less so after the suicide of his eldest son, Fidelito, earlier this year.

For younger Cubans, Miguel Díaz-Canel gets points for being under 60, for championing access – albeit censored – to the internet, and for being an ally to Mariela’s LGBT campaign.



But no one expects him to buff up Cuba’s human rights record, which last week was condemned by the secretary general of the Organization of American States, who blasted Cuba as “an infamous dictatorship”.



Recent years have seen several historic changes in Cuba, but Raúl Castro’s departure is unlikely to mark another. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Then there is the perennial thorny problem of its superpower northern neighbor: Donald Trump has remained unremittingly hostile, and partially reversed Barack Obama’s historic detente with the island.

Once again, as during the cold war, the US embassy is down to a skeletal staff, in retribution for the so-called “sonic attacks” on embassy personnel. (Never mind that the cause and perpetrators have yet to be definitively determined.)



Recent years have seen several historic changes in Cuba, including Obama’s rapprochement and the end of “the Wet Foot-Dry Foot” immigration policy, which rewarded citizenship to any Cuban who appeared on US shores.

Some might have thought Raúl’s retirement as president was another such a game-changer. But with the army and party still firmly under his wing, it is not – at least for now.



Ann Louise Bardach is a veteran Cuba analyst and the author of Without Fidel and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami, Havana and Washington.

