Raúl Castro's inner circle hints at the future Cuba

MiamiHerald.com | 01/31/2007 | Raúl Castro's inner circle hints at the future Cuba

Six months after Cuban leader Fidel Castro ceded power, a reformer has been taking on an increasingly prominent role while hard-liners slide.

The latest leader to emerge in Cuba is a pediatrician and economic reformer who's known for biking to work.

Vice President Carlos Lage, a 55-year-old who once served on a medical mission to Ethiopia, became the nation's economic czar in the early 1990s. And now Lage has become one of the few Cuban politicians to stand out as a rising confidant of interim leader Raúl Castro.

Lage's rise -- and the perceived slide of hard-liners close to Fidel Castro, such as Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque -- has marked the six months since Castro ceded power to his brother following surgery for a still undisclosed ailment.

As old-time communist stalwarts and young up-and-comers close ranks in Havana to consolidate power in a not quite post-Fidel Cuba, experts agree that Lage's heightened profile is a sign of a Cuba to come: one under Raúl, where an economic overhaul could be welcomed.

Once on the edges of the Cuban limelight, Lage has represented Cuba at most international gatherings, from presidential summits to inaugurations, and recently headed a top-level delegation to Caracas to sign a string of agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Cuba's top ally and financial backer.

''Lage is key in all this,'' said Wayne Smith, a former chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana and critic of U.S. Cuba policy. ``Lage had been sort of put in the back seat, because he wanted to move ahead with economic reforms and Fidel didn't. Raúl comes in and makes Lage his right-hand man. He's been brought out of the closet, so to speak.''

PAST INITIATIVES

Lage was credited with pushing state enterprise administrators to increase productivity and keep the economy from collapsing without surrendering socialism after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, he oversaw a series of economic changes that permitted limited and indirect land holdings and small businesses.

They were moves Raúl is believed to have supported, but Fidel curtailed them.

When Fidel announced July 31 that an intestinal ailment had sidelined him and he needed to relinquish power for the first time in 47 years, he assigned his pet projects to six senior officials.

He put energy and finance in the hands of Lage, a member of the Communist Party's ruling Politburo since 1991 and one of the younger members of Castro's inner circle. His son, also named Carlos, is now head of the influential Federation of University Students.

And while he has touted the need for economic changes, Lage by no means wavers in his commitment to socialism.

''Socialism in Cuba is irreversible . . . because with our efforts yesterday and today, we make it irreversible,'' he said in a speech last month. ``In Cuba, there will be no succession; there will be continuity.''


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