Fidel Castro has written his latest reflection titled: “The Living and the Dead.” The Maximum Leader turned op-ed writer acknowledged recently sacked Education Minister Luis Ignacio Gómez Guriérrez as “truly exhausted” and “losing energy and revolutionary conscience.” While referencing his numerous travels abroad on behalf of Cuban education, Fidel chastised him for previous speeches whereby he took “personal accomplishment” instead of “extolling a body of work that was the authentic product of numerous revolutionary cadres.”

Fidel mentions the selection process of his replacement Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, who was among the list of fifteen candidates.

However, further along his reflection, a cryptic passage summons the following:

“When I had the privilege of also being consulted on the eve of the election of the Council of State, I did not hesitate in proposing that prestigious military leaders –who brought our heroic people glory and moral authority– such as Leopoldo Cintras Frías and Álvaro López Miera, who are mature, modest, brimming with experience and energy, younger than the military officer who is one of the strongest and most threatening candidates for the leadership of the empire, should be proposed to the National Assembly as candidates for membership in the Council of State. I know other cadres, quite a bit younger than they are, highly qualified, with excellent training and not very publicized, people whom we must consider.”

Is this tacit acknowledgment that those generals selected to the Council of State where chosen because they are loyal acolytes of Raul Castro and the younger generation of capable officers were passed over?

Moreover, does this cryptic passage alert us to a discontent by officers, and that future and careful consideration by Raul’s regime should be made to advance the younger generation within the officer corps to quell such discontent?

Something worth pondering about the state of internal cohesion of the armed forces.

[H/T: La Nueva Cuba.]

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The Center for Defense Information Studies - CDIS (Centro de Estudios de Información de la Defensa - CEID) is holding in Havana its first international conference on Security and Defense, which began on April 21, and concludes today.

CEID is an academic entity independent from the Cuban military apparatus that operates under the similar status of a non-governmental organization (NGO) and was designed to establish an open communication with the US military. The Center was first headed by Div. Gen. Jesus Bermudez Cutiño, former Chief of Cuban Military Intelligence.

The conference, according to its call for papers/presentations website, will have as intention to examine with the highest scientific rigor, diverse subjects of great interest to the Security and Defense in the international, regional and national levels, in order to look for agile formulas and proposals to face and to solve the serious problems that threaten the same subsistence of the countries, regions and Humanity.

Among the topics of discussion are: Security and Defense in America, War and Peace, actual and perspective status of the theoretic studies on Security and Defense at worldwide scale, and global problems for Humanity.

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Via Prensa Latina:

Cuba’s Council of State, on a proposal of the Politburo, has appointed Ana Elsa Velazquez Cobiella as new Education Minister, an official note reports Tuesday. Velazquez substitutes Luis Ignacio Gomez Gutierrez. Before her appointment, she was head of the Frank Pais Higher Pedagogical Institute in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

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