Cuba

Cuban state media reported that a Boeing 737 on a domestic flight crashed in a rural area Friday afternoon shortly after takeoff from Havana's José Martí International Airport.

There were reportedly 104 passengers plus crew aboard the plane that was leased by Cubana de Aviación, the Cuban national airline, from a Mexican company. At least three survivors were transported to a nearby hospital. Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, reported the three were in critical condition.

Fidel Castro is dead and brother Raúl is no longer president of Cuba. But communism can still move the needle in Miami campaigns.

Decades after the Cuban revolution spawned an exodus that reshaped South Florida culture and U.S. politics in the Caribbean, political exiles are declining in number in Miami and leftist angst is fading. But it's far from gone. And under the right conditions and in the right neighborhoods, evoking the tyranny of dictators can still be an effective tactic in manipulating votes and undercutting opponents.

COMMENTARY

Covering Cuba, I’ve long followed this maxim: If both the communist leadership in Havana and the exile leadership in Miami are angry at you, you’ve probably done your job right.

I felt that way 10 years ago this very week, when I wrote that Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl disagreed on economic policy.

Cuba's new President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel grew up in the Cuban revolution and it's clear his mission is to make sure it survives.

Miguel Díaz-Canel, who wasn't even born at the time of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, is the only candidate proposed for president by Cuba's National Assembly, which voted Wednesday on a successor to the retiring Raúl Castro.

Cuba's parliament, however, won't officially reveal the results of the vote until it readjourns Thursday.

Cuba moved up by a day the historic legislative session in which Raúl Castro will leave the presidency. The session of the National Assembly will be on Wednesday instead of Thursday, official press reported Monday.

The Council of State said it was moving up the meeting of the National Assembly in order to “facilitate the development of the steps that such a transcendental session requires.” The National Assembly session will begin at 9 a.m. in Havana’s Convention Palace.

COMMENTARY

When Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died two years ago, then U.S. President Barack Obama issued a lame response: “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

Mister Rogers would have offered a tougher assessment of Castro, a communist caudillo whose repressive revolution has ruled Cuba for 59 years. When Obama’s statement reached Havana, you could hear regime apparatchiks high-fiving each other all over the island.