A retiring Castro to bring younger face to Cuba’s communists

HAVANA — This week’s Communist Party congress could be the last with a Castro at the helm of Cuba’s all-powerful political institution. “They don’t how to bring real change because any change must start with a lot of self-critique.” At the previous Communist Party congress, in 2016, Castro announced that owing to the “inexorable laws of life,” he would step down as first secretary-general of the Communist Party in 2021 and yield power to Diaz-Canel. That would potentially leave the 17-member Politburo for the first time without any veterans of the guerrilla insurgency, or what many Cubans affectionately refer to as the “historic generation.” William LeoGrande, an American University expert on Cuba, said such an outcome could greatly enhance Diaz-Canel’s ability to push through overdue reforms as part of a broader economic opening approved a decade ago. “They keep saying they will require the state enterprises to become profitable but that’s precisely where there’s resistance because the private sector isn’t growing fast enough,” said LeoGrande, who frequently conducts research in Cuba but hasn’t traveled there since prior to the pandemic.