Cuban’s Vice-President, former medical student Carlos Lage, is set to become Cuba’s next big thing, besides the next premiere destination for the Cancun crowd during Spring Break:

He is more of a party guy than a state police guy - unlike those whose hands are tainted with blood,” says Mr Leon, who grew up in Havana in the 1980s.

Exiles who would never talk to the Castro brothers, he believes, might speak to someone like Mr Lage if they thought it could lead to an end to communist rule.

Yet, as Mr Kapcia points out, Carlos Lage is very much the Castro brothers’ man.

Bromantic!

“He is seen by the Cuban leadership as a safe pair of hands in terms of keeping the basics of the system together but making the necessary reforms,” he says.

“He is also quite broadminded and quite willing to adapt, and the nature of the Cuban system is that it does adapt remarkably well.

True, it has changed so drastically in the last five decades or so. Fingers crossed, Chuck!

Profile: Cuba’s Carlos Lage [BBC]