Octopus Overlords

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez has been elected president of Cuba, officially ending the Castro family's decades of domination of the country's highest office. The Communist Party formally announced the presidency's transition from Raúl Castro on Thursday, in what might better be described as a coronation than an election.

In fact, if there was any surprise at all, it might be that Díaz-Canel, the 57-year-old party stalwart long expected to succeed Castro, did not win every vote cast after the party nominated him its sole candidate Wednesday. Just 603 of 604 Cuban lawmakers voted for him in a secret ballot that night.

After the result was announced Thursday, Díaz-Canel and Castro mounted the dais in front of the National Assembly and embraced in a gesture both real and deeply symbolic.
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He outlined a vision of gradual policy evolution — and at the same time, he was careful to add that his predecessor, who has led Cuba since 2008 when his brother Fidel stepped down, would remain very much a force in the government. Raúl Castro might be passing the presidential torch, as it were, but the 86-year-old leader remains head of the military and the ruling Communist Party.

Castro pledged to lead the party until 2021, at which point Díaz-Canel is expected to replace him in that position, as well.
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Still, beneath the promises of continuity rests an important — if symbolic — changing of the guard. At nearly three decades Castro's junior, Díaz-Canel hails from a generation that wasn't even alive when Fidel Castro led the revolution ousting military dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

And though he has publicly espoused party orthodoxy, Díaz-Canel has not been a cookie-cutter bureaucrat, exactly. NPR's Carrie Kahn notes that as a young man, the longtime provincial leader who became first vice president "did sport long hair, loved rock music and even backed a local LGBT-friendly cultural center."