ABSTRACT
As Cuba enters a new era, initiated by the Communist Party’s VI Congress in April 2011, Havana’s traditional anti-hegemonic foreign policy is responding to the complex challenges in the changing domestic and international context in a pragmatic way as it has done in the past. Domestically, the priority of the Cuban government has shifted from “the battle of ideas,” a strategy of enhancing ideological commitment through mass mobilizations, to the so-called updating of the economic model. In foreign policy, this requires prioritizing favorable external conditions to insert Cuba in the international economy and expand its relations with partners that can contribute to that priority. At the same time, President Raúl Castro has publicly stated that he and other principals of the “historic generation” will be stepping down in 2018 and that power will devolve to younger political leaders, most of them with little or no international exposure, such as Miguel Díaz Canel, the new first vice president.1
