Los viejos

The appointment last Sunday of Jose Ramon Machado Venture, a 77-year-old loyalist and supposed hard-liner, as the effective number two of the “new” Castro regime surprised almost everyone inside and outside the island.

Many of us didn’t even know Machado Ventura was still around.

Well, here is some interesting background on the new first vice-president of the Council of State, courtesy of exiled Cuban journalist and author Carlos Alberto Montaner.

According to the normally very well informed Montaner, we should consider Machado the Cuban equivalent of Carrero Blanco, the totally loyal deputy to Francisco Franco who was meant to ensure the continuation of Francoism after the dictator’s death.

Unfortunately for Carrero Blanco, he died at the hands of ETA in December 1973, a couple of years before Franco finally kicked the bucket.

Read the article here, in Spanish.