Feature: Raul Castro and the Cuban socialist model

On Friday, June 3, Cuban President Raul Castro will turn 85 years old. Yet he remains fully immersed in the project of reforming the island's economy while never veering from the Socialist model laid down in 1959.

One of Raul's greatest achievements is the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States. On Dec 17, 2014, after secret bilateral talks which lasted over a year, Raul gave a public speech in which he announced that the two countries would seek to restore diplomatic ties and re-open their embassies.

The two nations restored the diplomatic ties on July 20, 2015, but the highlight of this new restoration of ties came in March, 2016 when Obama visited Cuba, the first trip by a sitting U.S. president in 88 years.

Raul acknowledged that the United States has taken certain steps to improve ties, yet he has remained firm that the United States must lift the ongoing economic embargo and return the land occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base for the sake of normalizing the ties between these two countries.

As a young man, Raul participated in student movement alongside his brother Fidel. In 1953 at the age of 22, he took part in an attack with around a hundred other young people on the Moncada Barracks in the city of Santiago de Cuba. He was sentenced to 13 years in jail as a result but was released with his brother after just two years later due to an Amnesty Law passed by the Cuban government at that time.

The Castros took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Cuba and eventually exiled themselves to that country, before returning to Cuba in December 1956 on a boat named "Granma."

Raul then pursued a career in the army which was controlled by Fidel and the Argentinean fighter, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who led him to obtain the rank of Commander in February 1958. After the new Castro government was established on the island, Raul was named First Vice-President in December 1976 and promoted to the rank of General that same year.

Given his long service to the Revolution, it was not surprising that Raul was appointed to become interim president on July 31, 2006. After that, this position became permanent on Feb. 24, 2008, at which point Raul embarked on a new era of change for Cuba, which was reflected in both the country's domestic and foreign policy.

Firstly, Raul sought to diversify sources of income for the local economy and to raise the quality of life for Cubans, without giving up on "social conquests" made over the previous 50 years.

What's more, he advanced the country's socialist and economic policies when he was elected First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party at the party's Sixth Congress in April 2011.

These structural reforms were aimed at modernizing the Cuban socialist model to the benefit of all Cubans, and included gradually reducing public jobs, opening up the private sector, easing migratory policy, giving individuals the right to purchase and sell their own homes and cars and loosening the tax and foreign investment law. Furthermore, citizens could now ask to be given access to land for productive purposes, and cooperatives could be opened in sectors besides agriculture.

Raul's reforms were seen as a success, and he was re-elected by the PCC's Seventh Congress in April.

Through it all, Raul has stuck by his principles. He says his main challenge for moving forward will be to guarantee that the Revolution is passed on to the next generation and that the country will move forward in building a "prosperous, sustainable and irreversible" socialist society in order to safeguard the "revolutionary principles of justice and equality." Endi