HAVANA – Raul castro he spoke on the opening day of the 8th Congress of the single party on the Caribbean island, closing an era, that of the Castro family. The first Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party passes the baton to the president of the country, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
And now Cuba will be without Castro
by our correspondent Omero Ciai
Castro said that the “development of the national economy” is today, together with the “struggle for peace and ideological firmness”, one of the party’s “main missions”. The words of the 89-year-old leader of the CCP were broadcast by the state radio station Radio clock. The Congress is held behind closed doors: no access to the foreign press or live television broadcasts.
In his speech, Castro “urged us to defend the increase in national production, especially food, and to ban the harmful habit of importing”. “The country must get used to living with what we have and not expect more than what we are able to generate, so that the unsatisfied demands of the population constitute an incentive for national producers”.
An evocative video of the figure and thought of Fidel Castro preceded the start of the summit in the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana. The Congress, which will last four days, will not only see the changeover next Monday at the head of the CCP between Castro, 89, and the 60-year-old Diaz-Canel, but also the entry of new faces, of personalities born after the ‘Revolución’ of 1959.
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di Norberto Fuentes
The official media have exalted the significance of the appointment, recalling that it coincides with the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the Cuban revolution, and also the 60th anniversary of the failure suffered by the United States with the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion ‘: the operation attempted unsuccessfully by the CIA to subvert the Castro regime.
The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, confirmed that a change in US policy towards Cuba is not a priority for the Biden administration, which will, however, closely monitor the changes at the top of the Caribbean country. For his part, Castro appealed for “a respectful dialogue” with the US, “without renouncing socialism”.
The official newspaper of the Communist Party Granma has emphasized for days that the Congress, inspired by “historical continuity”, “will focus its attention on fundamental issues for the present and the future of the nation, including the updating of the ‘Conceptualization of the Cuban economic and social model of socialist development’, and the implementation of the economic and social policy guidelines “.
Since the death of Fidel Castro, the government has implemented a series of reforms, changing the model of society from communist to socialist in 2018, and introducing an ever wider opening of the state economy in favor of the private sector that has been accelerated since February 1.
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