Cuba celebrates 60 years of revolution amongst challenges and change

Cuba will celebrate 60 years of revolution on Tuesday amidst economic crises and political reforms, the first time it will mark such an anniversary without a revolutionary fighter in power.

The symbolic commemoration will take place in Santiago de Cuba at the foot of the tombs of national heroes Jose Marti and Fidel Castro, while the latter's brother Raul will give a speech.

For the first time since 1976, Cuba's president is not a Castro, after Miguel Diaz-Canel, 58, took over in April as president from Raul, who nonetheless retains significant influence.

Diaz-Canel wasn't even born when Fidel Castro declared on January 1, 1959: "At last we've arrived in Santiago. The road was long and hard, but we've arrived." The United States-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country earlier that day, leaving the way for Castro to install a communist one-party system.

Last week, Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter: "The Cuban revolution is invincible, it grows, it lasts." But not everyone is convinced.

Dissident Vladimiro Roca, whose father Blas Roca served as a high-ranking official under Fidel Castro, insists: "The revolution died a long time ago." Abroad, Cuba's government has faced much criticism for its authoritarian nature, intolerance of opposition and persecution of detractors. Vladimiro Roca was jailed from 1997 to 2002 for his protests.

And while relations between Cuba and the US thawed under Barack Obama, the Caribbean island of 11 million people has had to contend with an increasingly hostile administration under President Donald Trump these last two years.

Change is coming, though.

The communist regime submits to referendum in February a new constitution which will officially recognize private property, markets and foreign investment.

However, it also ratifies communism as the "social goal," insists the country will "never" return to capitalism, and defines the Communist Party as "unique" and the "supreme political force of State and society." - 'New Cycle'