Brother poised to step forward, consider change

Fidel Castro with Saddam Hussein and Raúl Castro, then Cuba's defense minister, in Havana. Raúl Castro has extended an olive branch to Cuba's arch-enemy, the US government. (AFP/Getty Images/file/1979)

MEXICO CITY - Raúl Castro has long operated in the backstage of Cuban politics. But his public record, which has emerged over his 19 months as interim president, suggests he might pursue reforms to allow more political and economic latitude on the island.

Rough-edged and uneasy in the spotlight, Raúl Castro, 76, appears to have been laying the groundwork for a larger reconfiguration of Cuba's economy since he took over from his ailing older brother, Fidel, in July 2006.

He has publicly mocked Cuban farmers for failing to cultivate rich farmland, held public forums for citizens to criticize the government, and set in motion reforms to streamline the country's famously inefficient bureaucracies, especially those involved in distributing food to Cubans who face constant shortages.

If picked through the actions of Cuba's newly elected National Assembly and Council of State in a presidential vote scheduled for Sunday, Raúl Castro is almost certain to preside over a government based more on a collective style of leadership - and less on personality - than his brother. A career military man, Raúl is known more for his organizational skills than his charisma.

"He reminds me of an 82d Airborne sergeant major," said retired US General Barry McCaffrey, who met with Raúl Castro in Havana in 2002. "He's gruff. Sure of himself. He's a soldier."

There is a slim chance the assembly and council could choose among two of Fidel's other favorites - the young, ideological foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, or the technocratic vice president, Carlos Lage. The two have helped Raúl Castro run the country since Fidel became ill.

In the past 12 years, with varying degrees of success, Raúl Castro has pushed reforms his brother had been reluctant to embrace until the fall of the country's biggest financial backer, the Soviet Union.

The younger Castro started slowly, first allowing private ownership of small food markets. Then Raúl Castro, who has been defense minister since 1959, shrank the military. He converted some generals into businessmen so that they could run the tourism empire he built after persuading his brother to allow more foreign investment. The military now presides over a lucrative tourist trade, cutting partnership deals with European hoteliers.

In another apparent break with his brother, Raúl Castro offered a surprise in 1994 when Cubans were fleeing the island. He took to the podium to calm a population struggling to feed itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Beans," he told a crowd in Havana, "are more important than cannons."

The concise slogan he delivered became his most memorable line. Suddenly, a country that had envisioned itself as a place under siege was admitting that feeding its residents meant more than building its military.

Raúl Castro played a key role in building and leading the legendary guerrilla force in the Sierra Maestra mountains that conquered Cuba in 1959. He was the more devout Marxist-Leninist of the Castro brothers and would later travel to the Soviet Union to handle many of the negotiations that brought nuclear weapons to the island and sparked the Cuban missile crisis.