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→History of Cuba
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==History of Cuba== | ==History of Cuba== | ||
Although Castro maintained a firm grip on power, speculation grew outside Cuba on the state of his health, especially given his advancing age. Increasing attention was focused on his brother and designated successor, Raúl Castro Ruz, who was also the head of the armed forces, and Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, the influential president of the National Assembly. Indeed, on July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro passed power on a provisional basis to Raúl in order to recover from a serious intestinal illness. In February 2008 Fidel Castro officially announced that he would not accept another term as the president and commander in chief of Cuba, a position that he had held for 49 years; Cuba’s National Assembly chose Raúl as Cuba’s new leader. | |||
Soon after the transfer of power to Raúl Castro, Cuba abolished its equal pay system, removing wage restraints that had been in place since the early 1960s. Other reforms were implemented as well, with Cubans being allowed to purchase cellular phones and personal computers and to stay at hotels formerly reserved for foreigners. The European Union, which had imposed sanctions against Cuba in 2003 for its repression of dissidents, lifted the sanctions in June 2008, a move that was criticized by the United States. | |||
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and Spain negotiated with the Cuban government in 2010 for the release of 52 political prisoners. The dissidents had been imprisoned as part of a 2003 crackdown on journalists and activists who, according to Fidel Castro, had been undermining the Cuban government on behalf of the United States. Although the government issued no statement about the negotiated release, seven of the prisoners were freed in mid-July 2010 and immediately sent to Spain. | |||
In September, only days after Fidel Castro had told an American reporter that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Raúl Castro announced new official toleration of private enterprise and the layoff of some 500,000 government employees. In August 2011 the National Assembly approved a new set of measures that further opened the economy. Among those steps was a reduction of the state’s role in the agricultural, construction, transportation, and retail sectors, along with yet more encouragement for the development of private business. As many as a million more jobs were targeted to be cut, especially from the country’s gigantic bureaucracy. The draconian travel restrictions that had been in place since the revolution were also revised. Perhaps the most dramatic change of all was the announcement that the buying and selling of private property would be legalized at the end of the year. By the middle of 2012 it was estimated that some 390,000 Cubans had embarked on a myriad of self-employment enterprises (cuenta-propistas), including everything from beauty parlours and auto-repair firms to taxi services and restaurants. After being elected to a second term as president in February 2013, Raúl Castro announced that he would not seek to return to that office at the end of his term in 2018. | |||
Throughout 2013 the Cuban government implemented new measures designed to provide short-term economic relief and meet long-range political goals. Among the most important of the reform measures was the liberalization of restrictions regulating foreign travel, which no longer required Cubans to obtain official authorization or a letter of invitation from a person or an institution abroad. The new terms of travel also increased the maximum length of time residents could remain away from the island to two years—or longer. Moreover, expatriate Cubans could return to the island and reside for periods as long as three months at a time. The number of state-operated enterprises that were transferred to private ownership also grew markedly. | |||
A handshake between Raúl Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama in December 2013, at a memorial for South African leader Nelson Mandela, offered symbolic new hope for improved Cuban-U.S. relations that bore fruit almost exactly one year later. On December 17, 2014, both leaders appeared before national television audiences to announce the restoration of diplomatic relations between their countries that had been in abeyance for more than 50 years. The policy change was agreed to in phone conversation between the two leaders and came after 18 months of secret negotiations that had been fostered by the Canadian government and Pope Francis I. The revelation was accompanied by the release of three Cuban intelligence agents who had been jailed in the United States since 1998, a U.S. intelligence agent who had been captive in Cuba for nearly 20 years, and Alan Gross, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who had been held in Cuba since 2009 after being convicted of importing illegal technology and attempting to establish secret Internet service for Cuban Jews. In his speech, Castro emphasized the necessity of removing the U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade of Cuba, which, because it was codified by U.S. law, was subject to congressional action and beyond the scope of Obama’s executive authority. | |||
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