This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Cuba’s new president has promised to modernize the country’s economy and make the government more responsive to its people, even as he pledged to uphold the values of the country’s socialist revolution.

Miguel Díaz-Canel was sworn in as president on Thursday, becoming the island’s first leader without the Castro surname for the first time in almost 60 years.



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At a functionalist conference centre in Havana, Díaz-Canel, 57, read a brief speech which sought to reconcile revolutionary continuity with a recognition of the need for change. He said there would be no “capitalist restoration”, but promised to make better use of the internet and push on with “the modernization of our social and economic model”.

He finished his address with the familiar rhetorical flourish: “Socialism or Death! We will triumph!”

Raúl Castro, 86 – who stood down as president after 12 years in the office but remains first secretary of the Communist party – embraced Díaz-Canel, and gave his presidency a ringing endorsement.



But he left no doubt where power still lies. In an uncharacteristically long speech, in which he repeatedly joked and went off script, Castro emphasised the need to fight corruption – and said he would stay on to guide his successor.



Profile Who is Miguel Díaz-Canel? Show Hide 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

Castro said he expected Díaz-Canel to serve two five-year terms as president before replacing him as first secretary of the party when he retires in 2021. “From that point on, I will be just another soldier defending this revolution,” Castro said.

Amid the anachronistic language, there were signs that the new president was trying to forge a more modern image for the island’s ruling Communist party.

In what appeared to be a centrally managed information operation, the hashtag #somoscontinuidad (#wearecontinuity) was trending on Twitter.

Internet access has expanded rapidly in recent years, but still remains below the regional average. All major international news websites can be accessed from the island, but government censors block critical blogs as well as webpages financed by the US state department.

Communist party insiders say Díaz-Canel is aware of the economic benefits that wider internet access could bring the island’s economy, but fears the island’s political system could be overwhelmed.

Under the Obama administration, USAid worked on developing a “Cuban twitter” aimed at fomenting unrest, and in January the US state department launched a Cuba Internet Task Force, which Havana sees as another attempt to undermine it.



Díaz-Canel assumes office at a tricky time for the island after the Trump administration partially reversed the fragile détente announced by Castro and Barack Obama in 2014.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Changing of the guard: Raúl Castro greets his successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Photograph: Adalberto Roque / Pool/EPA

The US has said Cuba was “responsible” for a series of mysterious health ailments affecting US embassy personnel on the island and has withdrawn more than half of its diplomatic staff. Washington has also warned US citizens not to visit the island – a move which is starting to choke off tourism revenues.

Cuba’s main ally, Venezuela, is in crisis, and has heavily cut back on highly subsidized oil shipments to Cuba, upon which the island is heavily reliant.



One of Díaz-Canel’s first tasks as president will be to unify the island’s byzantine dual-currency system. Analysts say that if not managed correctly, unification could provoke inflation which could hit the purchasing power of poorer Cubans who form the base of the government’s support.

Unlike the carefully orchestrated election, currency unification has the potential to unsettle the island’s seemingly rock-solid political stability.

Cubans were divided about the new president. “It’s not good news for me,” said Liliam Rodríguez, 33, who works as a tour guide. “He’s looks like he’s against the private sector in recent speeches.”

“I don’t see him as a president,” Gerardo Cartalla, 56, a taxi driver. “In the current situation, I’d have liked Raúl to stay on as president. He’s somebody everybody respects.”