Despite a new rule of power in the Cuban government the grandpas in charge will continue to use Granma to communicate to their people, and they will also work together to maintain Castro’s Cuba.

With Castro’s wish for a transition of the communist party into the hands of a younger generation, his brother, 76-year-old Raul Castro, has been elected as the country’s new president.

Castro’s younger brother had previously led Cuba’s armed forces and many say that he is a shadow and repeat of the former dictator.

On Feb. 19, 2008, Cuban dictator Fidel Castroannounced that he would no longer serve as the country’s leader.

During his 49 years in power, he transitioned himself from a determined revolutionary into a communist icon.

“I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief,” he said in Cuba’s communist party daily newspaper, Granma.

During Fidel’s rule over Cuba, he has successfully managed to withstand nine U.S. presidents, as well as 600 attempts of assassination by the CIA. He has also managed to maintain free healthcare and education systems and, as a result, Cuba currently has 98 percent literacy among its people.

Castro has also been known around the world as a controversial leader criticized for his bad relationship with the United States and violations of human rights; the people of Cuba have been split between those who have embraced him and those who have fled the country wanting nothing to do with him.

In a letter to one of the journalists of the communist Cuban newspaper, Fidel said, “My element duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.”

In an interview found in a Florida based newspaper, Sunsentinal, Miami-Cuban radio show host and former Cuban journalist Armando Perez Roha explained that Cuba would see no change with a newly elected leader. “I believe it’s a trick from the Castro government, a government we have been suffering for almost half a century,” he said.

He also said that Cubans should not be fooled by the exchange of power from one Castro brother to the other because it is only a silly illusion.

Castro has stepped down not only because he can no longer give his all to rule Cuba, but because he says he does not want to stand in the way of a new generation of communist power. So what really changed for Cuba?

Anna Torres can be reached at [email protected]