Four possible successors to Fidel Castro

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Four possible successors to Fidel Castro
February 20, 2008

Raul Castro

The brother who has filled in since Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness is a pragmatist more concerned with putting food on tables than with spreading revolution abroad.

The outwardly dour 76-year-old lacks his brother's charisma and has lived in his shadow for decades. But as acting president, Raul Castro has encouraged Cubans to openly debate the shortcomings of communism.

The camera-shy army general has acknowledged that wages paid by Cuba's socialist state are too low. Yet he is not expected to follow China's example and free up a market economy, at least not while his brother is alive. And he has promised more socialism.

Since their guerrilla war and the triumph of their revolution on Jan. 1, 1959, Raul Castro has long been his brother's most trusted right-hand man.

Carlos Lage

The son of Havana laborers became a vice president of the Council of State in 1993, positioning him as the third-most powerful figure, behind the two Castros.

Lage, 56, studied medicine at the University of Havana, earning a degree in pediatrics. He has been involved in politics since his student days, becoming head of the Federation of University Students in 1975.

He was elected to the National Assembly in 1976 and a decade later was recruited by Fidel Castro for the Council of State and the Assistance and Support Team, the strategic planning force from which he gained national attention with his Special Period reforms.

Appointed secretary of the Council of Ministers in 1990, he has served a prime ministerial function, albeit under constant guidance -- some would say intrusion -- from Castro. Although he is thought to support free and direct parliamentary elections and to advocate more private enterprise to boost services and quality of life, his few public expressions on international relations have toed the revolutionary line.

Ricardo Alarcon

The president of the National Assembly serves as the voice of the Havana hierarchy at the annual U.N. General Assembly and on issues of international conflict.

Alarcon, 70, has made the public case for the U.S. extradition of radical anti-Castro exile Luis Posada Carriles for trial in Venezuela, on charges that he bombed a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, as well as for the release of the Cuban Five, jailed in the U.S. since 2001 on espionage charges.

An undergraduate at the University of Havana when Fidel Castro was plotting his revolution, Alarcon served as a leader of the National Student Front, organizing high school and university students in boycotts, building takeovers and street protests. He joined the Foreign Ministry after earning his doctorate and in less than a year was heading the ministry's Latin American directorate.

In 1966, he was appointed ambassador to the U.N., a post he held until 1978.

Felipe Perez Roque

The youngest of Cuba's emerging leaders and among the least likely to stray from Castro's policies, the 42-year-old has been foreign minister since 1999, when he became the first Cabinet member who had been born after the revolution.

A student of electrical engineering at a Havana technical school, Perez Roque followed the well-trodden path to power through the Federation of University Students into the Communist Party ranks in his early 20s.

His activism caught Castro's eye, and he was submitted as a candidate for the National Assembly in 1986, earning a seat in the rubber-stamp parliament three years before being appointed Castro's personal secretary and gatekeeper.

Not known to have expressed support for loosening political or economic strictures, he has served as palace bulldog on contentious and internationally sensitive issues.

From Times Staff and Wire Reports