Politburo Reelects Castro; Brother Named Successor

President Fidel Castro has been reelected head of the Cuban Communist Party’s Politburo and has told delegates to the party congress that his brother would assume command in the event he dies or is disabled.

Raul Castro, the president’s younger brother, won reelection to the No. 2 party post Friday, and his wife, Vilma Espin, became the first woman elected to full membership on the Politburo, Cuba’s highest policy-making body.

Espin is also president of the Federation of Cuban Women.

The three members of the Castro family and the 11 other members elected to the Politburo by the party’s Central Committee will serve new five-year terms.

The 1,784 party delegates gathered at the Palace of Conventions for the final session of the Third Party Congress erupted in applause with the announcement by party stalwart Flavio Globar of Fidel Castro’s reelection.

Two women also were among 10 alternate Politburo members chosen by the Central Committee. They are Rosa Elena Simeon, president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, and Yolanda Ferrer Gomez, ideological secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women.

Fidel Castro said the addition of new members to the Central Committee, whose total exceeds 150, has sharply increased the representation of youth, blacks, citizens of mixed race and women. He said nonwhites and women now make up almost half the total.

Along with their election as first and second secretaries of the Politburo, Castro and his younger brother retained similar titles they have held in the party Secretariat.

Castro reaffirmed that his brother would replace him in the event Cuba’s “treacherous, criminal enemy,” the United States, succeeds in assassinating him or he is disabled.

He said he and his brother never travel in the same plane or the same car, “so as not to give the enemy a chance.”

Castro insisted that the Cuban revolution has never been firmer and added that it is three times stronger now than when President Reagan took office in 1981.