Headline Roundup • April 16th, 2021
Cuba's Raul Castro is Resigning Communist Party Post
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Featured Coverage of this Story
Washington Times
Raul Castro said Friday he is resigning as head of Cuba‘s Communist Party, ending an era of formal leadership by him and his brother Fidel Castro that began with the 1959 revolution.
The 89-year-old Castro made the announcement Friday in a speech at the opening of the Eighth Congress of the ruling party, the only one allowed on the island.
He said he was retiring with the sense of having “fulfilled his mission and confident in the future of the fatherland.”
Castro didn’t say who he would endorse as his...
For the first time in more than 60 years, Cuba is poised to have a government without a single Castro.
Raúl Castro, who succeeded his brother Fidel as the Communist Party of Cuba’s first secretary in 2011, is expected to step down from his post as the country begins its eighth Communist Party Congress on Friday.
“We all expect the old generation to step down from all of its functions within the party, including Raúl as first secretary,” said Ricardo Torres Pérez, a professor of economics at University of Havana.
...
When Raul Castro announced three years ago that he would step down in 2021 as head of Cuba's all-powerful communist party, he surely envisioned the island on firmer economic footing and the transition to a new generation of leadership nearly complete.
Things have not worked out exactly according to Castro's plan.
As Castro announced he was stepping down on Friday, his country is deep in crisis. The tourism-dependent island has been battered by the pandemic; the economy shrunk at least 11% in 2020 according to government estimates. Cubans each day...
