Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel replaced the country’s economy minister, amid delays to planned price hikes for fuel and transportation that the government blamed on a cyberattack. The fate of the measures, which had been scheduled for Feb. 1, is now uncertain. But the economic crisis that made them necessary is exceedingly clear.
In April 2021, Cuba experienced a watershed moment when Miguel Diaz-Canel became the leader of the Cuban Communist Party, completing a political transition that began three years earlier when Diaz-Canel was inaugurated as president. Now, for the first time since the 1959 revolution, a Castro leads neither the country nor the party, making way for a new generation of leaders to chart the island nation’s path forward.
One of the most important elections of the year, especially for the United States, will be in Mexico, where the next president will have to navigate not only the country’s internal problems, but also manage ties with Washington and deal with the increasingly negative attention the country receives north of the border.
