STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's hear next from Cuba, where Raul Castro provides(ph) this weekend over a meeting of the island's all-powerful Communist Party. The Cuban leader and younger brother of former President Fidel Castro has lowered expectations for any new announcements of economic reform. He said he wants to focus instead on internal party affairs. Many Cubans will be watching for any clue as to who could take over after the Castros are gone. Nick Miroff reports from Havana.
NICK MIROFF, BYLINE: During the 47 years that Fidel Castro ruled this island, he often surrounded himself with younger hand-picked proteges like economic planner Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. They were always on TV, seemingly groomed as the next generation of Cuban leaders. But in 2009 they were sacked, caught on secret recordings disparaging the Castros and their trusted circle of aging guerilla comrades.
Raul Castro has made clear the island's next leaders will have to rise through the party ranks in Cuba's provinces, says Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Havana journal Temas.
RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: Most of the Communist Party leaders in every province are very young. And taking into account the importance of the Communist Party secretary general in every province, we will find that 40 percent of them are women. Many of them are blacks. If you ask me what is the political succession, the political succession is right there. You have to look at that.
MIROFF: Many will be looking at this weekend's party conference for insight into who may be ascendant on Cuba's Politburo, not unlike the Kremlinology that once tried to decipher Soviet power relations. Raul Castro is 80 years old. His vice president is 81. Again, Rafael Hernandez.
HERNANDEZ: When you are over 80 years old, you have to stop thinking of the next 10 years or the next six or seven years. You have to do what you are going to do right now. And I think that the most important responsibility, the heaviest responsibility of this generation, is to move forward and to move forward as fast as possible into the Cuban transition towards a new Cuba and a new leadership.
MIROFF: Cuba's old leadership was a debate topic this week for Republican primary candidates in Florida facing questions about what would happen if Fidel Castro dies. The retired commandante fired back in one of his opinion columns Wednesday, calling their contest the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance ever heard.
But that's about all Castro does these days. He's 85 and hasn't appeared in public in months. His brother Raul is firmly in charge and whoever succeeds him is likely to follow the example he's set, gradually opening the economy to ease Cubans' frustrations. But major political reforms are not in the offing, says Miriam Leiva, a former diplomat who became a dissident writer in Havana.
MIRIAM LEIVA: The main thing is that they don't let the population decide anything. And they want to keep on in power and deciding everything. Because the Cuban population is accustomed to just accepting what comes from power and they know - Cubans know they cannot change anything.
MIROFF: At the last Communist Party meeting in April, the first of its kind in 14 years, Raul Castro surprised many with a proposal limiting public office to two five-year terms. Castro officially took over Cuba's leadership in 2008, so if he holds himself to that standard, his second term would be up in 2018, when he's 86 years old.
For NPR News, I'm Nick Miroff, Havana.