The National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP) is holding a session this week aimed at marking a turning point in the management of the Cuban crisis.
On the table are not only the 176 economic measures announced by the regime to try to revive an economy on the brink of collapse, but also the regulations that will provide legal coverage and allow their implementation.
The government insists that it is not changing the system, but rather "perfecting" socialism.
However, as Parliament adapts the legal framework to the largest package of economic reforms initiated in decades, one circumstance goes nearly unnoticed: the person currently leading that legislative work is no longer Homero Acosta Álvarez, long regarded as the principal legal architect of the 2019 Constitution, but rather José Luis Toledo Santander.
From the perspective of the parliamentary session these days, that substitution takes on a significance that was hardly discernible when it was announced.
A shift among more significant movements
On December 18, 2025, the regime undertook a quiet reorganization of part of its institutional leadership.
On that day, Rubén Remigio Ferro was relieved of his position as president of the Supreme People's Tribunal and was replaced by the then Minister of Justice, Óscar Silvera Martínez. In the same session, the departures of several figures from the state apparatus were also formalized, including Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento and Ricardo Rodríguez González.
In that context, another change occurred that hardly received any attention: Acosta Álvarez ceased to be the secretary of the National Assembly and the Council of State, a position that was taken over by Toledo Santander.
The official information was limited to announcing the change. There were no explanations regarding the departure of one of the most politically influential jurists in the regime over the last two decades.
Two jurists for two stages
Homero Acosta played a central role in the drafting of the 2019 Constitution and in the extensive legislative development that followed its approval.
He was one of the main defenders of the institutional model born from that constitutional text and the legal framework that was supposed to ensure its continuity.
Toledo Santander was not a stranger either.
A military prosecutor, a deputy for several legislative terms, and president for years of the Commission on Constitutional and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly, he had been gaining prominence in key legislative debates for some time.
In July 2025, he appeared alongside Homero Acosta to defend the constitutional reform that eliminated the age limit for holding the presidency of the Republic without resorting to a referendum, a modification that both presented as a technical adjustment compatible with the current Constitution.
Five months later, he was the one occupying his former colleague's office.
The 176 measures change the perspective
When that change occurred, the extent of the economic reforms approved today by the regime's parliament was still unknown. Now it is clear.
The 176 measures promoted by the government aim to expand the space for private initiative, relax business activity, open new avenues for investment, and modify essential aspects of the country's economic functioning, always under the official argument that all of this is part of the "updating" of Cuban socialism.
This process requires intense legislative adaptation. And this task falls precisely on the person who coordinates and supervises parliamentary work since last December, namely, José Luis Toledo Santander.
The chronological coincidence is, at the very least, striking.
The main architect behind the legal framework of the 2019 Constitution disappears from the institutional forefront just months before the regime embarks on the most ambitious economic reinterpretation since the approval of that same constitutional text.
An explanation that never came
There is no public evidence that Homero Acosta's departure was motivated by disagreements with the economic direction taken subsequently by the regime. To assert otherwise would be mere speculation.
However, it is also significant that the transition occurred precisely during the shift between two clearly differentiated stages: the development of the constitutional model approved in 2019 and its adaptation to a new economic reality characterized by the need to introduce reforms that just a few years ago seemed unthinkable within the official discourse.
The Constitution itself was designed to consolidate the continuity of the Cuban political and economic system. Today, without formally amending that text, Parliament is working to provide legal support for a package of reforms that compels the regime to reinterpret some of the principles on which it built that very model.
That legal transition now has a new leader.
More than a name change
Perhaps the replacement of Homero Acosta was simply due to the end of a political and legislative cycle.
Perhaps the regime needed a profile more focused on managing parliamentarily the new stage opened by the economic reforms. Or maybe there were other factors that never became known.
The truth is that the government never explained the reasons for the change.
And seven months later, when Toledo Santander leads the parliamentary session that is set to turn the largest package of economic reforms in recent decades into laws, that change no longer seems like just a mere administrative adjustment.
On the contrary, it becomes one of the least explained decisions in a process of institutional reorganization that can now be seen as part of the strategy through which the regime attempts to adapt its legal framework to the survival demands of an economic model in crisis.
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