Shuffling the Deck in Havana

After a year in office, Cuban President Raúl Castro made his mark with a cabinet shuffle that replaced some of the stalwarts from his brother Fidel’s government. The Associated Press offers a list of “who’s in and who’s out” in the shakeup affecting 12 ministries. Whether the changes represent an ideological shift or a simple trimming of bureaucracy remains to be seen. The move comes as Washington reconsiders some of the travel and remittance restrictions that make up its Cuba policy.

The Cuban leader merged four ministries and demoted two ministers closely aligned with his brother’s government: Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage. Once considered possible successors to Fidel Castro, Perez Roque was not named to a new position while Lage remains vice president of the Council of the State. Former journalist and Ambassador to the UN Bruno Rodriguez replaced Perez Roque and Brig. Gen. Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra, who worked closely with as Raúl Castro at the Defense Ministry, took Carlos Lage’s position.

With these changes, Raúl Castro could be making good on his pledge to streamline Cuban bureaucracy. American University’s William LeoGrande told the Christian Science Monitor that the shifts allows the president to leave his imprint: “If anyone had a doubt about who is in control, with this it can be put to rest.”  However, lest anyone consider that Fidel was absent from his brother’s decision-making process, he wrote in his Granma column that Raúl consulted him on the new ministerial choices. The ailing former leader, recently seen going for a labored walk in Havana, also hinted at reasons why Perez Roque and Lage were removed from their posts: “The honey of power, for which they had not sacrificed at all, awoke in them ambitions that led to an undignified role,” he wrote, reports El País.

An analysis by the Foreign Policy Association takes a look at the range of opinions as to the reason behind the cabinet shuffle, from Raúl Castro centralizing his power and strengthening the military to his striving for efficiency. The Cuban American National Foundation says the “abrupt changes remind us of Stalin’s purges.” But Steve Clemons of the Washington Note blog that the reshuffle shows Raúl is “done with ideology” and “demands pragmatism from his team.”

The shifts in Havana take place as Washington reexamines its own Cuba policy. Senator Richard Luger (R-IN), the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appended a letter to a report by minority committee staffers that said the embargo against Cuba “has failed to achieve its stated purpose of ‘bringing democracy to the Cuban people.’” The report, entitled “Changing Cuba Policy—In the United States National Interest” does not call for the end of the embargo, but does urge the White House to lift restrictions on travel and remittances imposed during the Bush administration, forge bilateral cooperation on drug and migration policy, and open the door to Cuban purchase of agricultural goods on credit.

Liz Harper blogs for Americas Quarterly about reactions to the report, as well as expected changes on U.S. policy that could include dropping restrictions against Americans traveling to Cuba. The Bush administration’s remittance and travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans face deferment in the short term; their suspension is attached to the $410 billion government-operations bill that has a Friday deadline for Senate approval.