Cubans greet the end of 62 years of Castro rule with Skepticism and a shrug
Cubans have a phrase for it: la bola en la called, the ball in the street. Raúl Castro’s announcement on Friday that he is to retire and bring 62 years of Castro rule on the island to a close caused a ripple barely, even if it sent waves worldwide. People in Havana more concerned about buying chicken, suspect little will change with Raúl’s departure News travels swiftly through Havana, bumping against people, so they turn.
Cubans were expecting it, and for those battling to buy food in what are increasingly tough times, there was scepticism about what difference it would make.“I don’t think there will be any significant changes shortly,” said one man. “Not as long as the old guard casts its shadow and influence on Cuban politics. ”He was instead following news that chicken had been spotted at a shop on Linea avenue, one that accepted Cuban pesos rather than US dollars. A vast queue had formed, swelling and writhing at its centre as tempers flared. The police arrived to keep the peace.
In his speech to the eighth congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), Castro told delegates he was stepping down with the satisfaction of having fulfilled his duty and “with confidence in the future of the Even if the population was distracted, the speech was intriguing. It distilled what we know about a man who for decades was a shadow next to his flamboyant brother.
It showed how far he had travelled from Marxist-Leninism in the 1960s toward market solutions, so long as the one-party rule he sees as a bulwark against US exploitation remains unthreatened. Since he took over from Fidel as president in 2008, and then as the more powerful first secretary of the party in 2011, he has introduced important economic reforms. Small-scale private businesses appeared, the buying and selling of houses and cars were allowed, and then came the arrival of mobile internet.
On Friday, he said: “We have to eliminate the tired illusion that Cuba is the only country where you can live without working.” He told the state media not to obscure the country’s problems with “triumphalism and superficiality”. He returned to his call for a new generation of leaders to emerge. Marta Deus is the 33-year-old founder of Mandal, a sort of Cuban Deliveroo. It is the business success story of lockdown, keeping many Havana’s restaurants, not to say residents, alive.
“Running a business here is super, super complicated,” she said. “Some ministers and vice-ministers want to change things, but the bureaucracy is still super hard. In my experience, nothing much has changed. Outside the shop on Linea, the queue has gone, along with any memory of chicken. All that remains are endless shelves of filtered water. News also travels swiftly through Havana by WhatsApp in the form of brutal memes, and one comes to mind. Why do Cuban shops now resemble the human body? Because they’re 70% water.
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