Cuba is an independent socialist republic. The Cuban constitution, adopted in 1975, defines it as a “socialist state of workers and peasants and all other manual and intellectual workers.” General Raúl Castro Ruz is head of both state and government. In February 2008, Raúl succeeded from his elder brother Fidel, who had served as top dog 1959–2008. Total power is legally vested in Raúl Castro as President of the Republic, President of the Council of the, President of the Council of Ministers, and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. General José Ramón Machado is First Vice President of both the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. (Machado, a doctor and old-guard revolutionary, fought alongside the Castros in the Sierra Maestra, rose to the rank of comandante, and later, as Minister of Health, oversaw development of Cuba’s health system.)

There are no legally recognized political organizations independent of the Communist Party, which controls the labyrinthine state apparatus and which the constitution (copied largely from the Soviet constitution of 1936) recognizes as “the highest leading force of the society and of the state.”