Cuban Communist Party leader announces resignation as family rule comes to an end

On Friday (April 16), Raul Castro officially announced that he will resign as head of the Cuban Communist Party. The move ends a reign that began in 1959 with his brother Fidel Castro.

Raul Castro made the announcement during a speech at the opening of the Cuban Communist Party’s eighth congress. Castro did not announce who his designated successor would be, but he had previously said he favored ceding control of the country to Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel, who takes over as Cuba’s president in 2018.

The move is considered a historic one, as the Castro brothers have been in power since Cuba’s revolution erupted in 1959, and Raul Castro’s move to resign is seen as the end of the Castro family’s history in power.

Many analysts believe that the influence of Castro, who turns 90 in June, will continue in Cuba until his death.

Fidel Castro, who gained power in Cuba during the 1959 revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista, has been the head of the Cuban Communist Party since 1965 and has had a long relationship with the Communist government.

In 2006, Fidel Castro fell ill and in 2008 handed over the presidency to his brother Raul Castro, who fought alongside him during the revolution.

Raul succeeded as party leader in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

Raul Castro’s retirement comes at a time when Cuba, one of the world’s few remaining communist regimes, is facing multiple challenges. Its economy shrank by 11 percent in 2020 due to an epidemic pandemic, and the country has struggled to cope with U.S. sanctions and declining aid from its inflation-suffering ally, Venezuela. The Cuban government lacks hard currency to import food and medicine, which means endless long lines outside stores when food is available and some families can only eat one meal a day.

The hardships facing the country have led to a level of public discontent in Cuba rarely seen since the Communist Party launched its revolution in 1959. Videos of the protests on the Internet have spread rapidly among Cubans, and a major protest by Cuban artists demanding more freedom of expression made one of the international headlines last November.