President Díaz-Canel is elected leader of Cuba’s Communist Party to replace Raul Castro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel replaced Raúl Castro as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal party) on Monday, on the fourth and last day of the 8th Congress of the political party.

Along with Raúl Castro, 89 years old, other historical leaders such as the current number two of the party, José Ramón Machado-Ventura (90), and Comandante Ramiro Valdés (88), as well as Marino Murillo, considered the “czar” of the economic reforms initiated a decade ago, left the PCC leadership.

For the moment, the Cuban state media, the only ones with access to the conclave coverage, have not specified who has been designated as the second secretary of the PCC to replace Machado-Ventura.

Among the new members of the most powerful body of the PCC and Cuba are the country’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, and Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, Raúl Castro’s son-in-law and head of the Cuban military-owned conglomerate GAESA, which controls the country’s most valuable economic assets.

In addition to Díaz-Canel, other members of the PCC’s highest leadership body include the President of the Parliament, Esteban Lazo; the Vice President, Salvador Valdés; the Deputy Prime Minister, Roberto Morales and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, among others.

In total, the new body is made up of 14 leaders, three fewer than the previous composition.

Among them are three veterans over 70 years of age and three women: the Federation of Cuban Women, Teresa Amarelle; the scientist and director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Marta Ayala, and the first secretary of the CP in Artemisa, Gladys Martínez.

The military is represented by the recently appointed Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Army General Álvaro López Miera; Major General Lázaro Álvarez Casas and by Rodríguez López-Callejas, who holds the rank of Brigadier General.

The Central Committee appointed the new Political Bureau elected the day before by the 300 delegates attending the meeting to represent the more than 700,000 militants, and whose composition has not yet been made public.

The Central Committee “is in charge of implementing resolutions, policies, and programs approved by the congress that elected it,” according to the official information disclosed.

The VIII Congress of the PCC will end today, on the same date on which the 60th anniversary of the “Victory of Playa Girón” is commemorated, as the failed anti-Castro invasion of the Bay of Pigs (1961) is called in Cuba.