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Raul Castro: change with continuity
As the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party steps down, BERNARD REGAN assesses whether he has achieved his task of modernising the celebrated socialist nation
Cuba's former President Raul Castro, center, and President Miguel Diaz-Canel, second left, attend an event celebrating Revolution Day in Santiago, Cuba

ON SUNDAY April 18 2021 Raul Castro Ruz stepped down as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party.

When he became the president of the republic of Cuba in 2008 he announced that he would be a candidate of transition from the “historic generation” that made the revolution to a new generation. He has kept that promise.

Now in his 90th year, he became politically active as a teenager, participating in student demonstrations in Havana against the military dictator Fulgencio Batista who staged a coup with the backing of the US in 1952.

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