14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2015 — If the reputation of a politician is measured by his or her presence in the media, we should say that José Ramón Machado Ventura has been the most visible picture of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) this year.
Exercising his functions as the second secretary of the PCC, he has been in charge of most of the provincial assemblies of this organization in advance of its 7th Congress scheduled for April of 2106. Also vice president of the Council of State, he is present at any event of a national character, be it for students, women or farmers. His role has made many fear a return to the hardest line within the government: a revival of the most rancid orthodoxy.
He has a well-deserved reputation of being extremely severe with his subordinates and of displaying his reluctance before any change or reform that departs to the slightest extent from the official line. His friends call him “Machadito” (“Little Machado”) though he was born in the now distant 1930.