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 attempt to reactivate an economy on the verge of collapse, but also the regulations that will provide them with legal coverage and allow their implementation.
The government insists that it is not changing the system, but instead "perfecting" socialism.
However, as the Parliament adapts the legal framework to the largest package of economic reforms launched in decades, one circumstance goes almost unnoticed: the person leading this legislative work today is no longer Homero Acosta Álvarez, regarded for years as the main 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 appreciated when it was announced.
A shift among more significant movements
On December 18, 2025, the regime undertook a discreet reorganization of part of its institutional leadership.
That day, Rubén Remigio Ferro was relieved of his position as President of the Supreme People's Court 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 went largely unnoticed: Acosta Álvarez ceased to be the secretary of the National Assembly and the Council of State, a role 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 legal experts in the regime over the past two decades.
Two lawyers 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 proponents of the institutional model arising from that constitutional text and the legal framework that was meant to ensure its continuity.
Toledo Santander was not an unknown figure either.
A military prosecutor, a deputy for several legislatures, and president for years of the Commission on Constitutional and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly, he had been gaining prominence in the main 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, it was he who occupied the office of his former colleague.
The 176 measures change the perspective
When that transition occurred, the extent of the economic reforms that the regime's parliament is approving today was still unknown. Now it is clear.
The 176 measures initiated by the government aim to expand the space for private initiative, to relax business activities, to open new avenues for investment, and to modify essential aspects of the country’s economic functioning, all under the official argument that this is part of the "updating" of Cuban socialism.
This process requires an intense legislative adaptation. And that 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 of the legal framework of the 2019 Constitution disappears from the forefront of institutions just months before the regime embarks on the most ambitious economic reinterpretation since the approval of that same constitutional text.
An explanation that never arrived
There is no public evidence that Homero Acosta's departure was motivated by disagreements with the economic direction subsequently taken by the regime. To claim otherwise would be speculation.
However, it is also noteworthy that the change took place precisely during the transition 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 modifying that text, Parliament is working to provide legal coverage for a set of reforms that forces the regime to reinterpret some of the principles on which it built that same model.
This legal transition now has a new person in charge.
More than just a change of names
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 phase opened by the economic reforms. Or maybe there were other factors that were never revealed.
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 will translate the largest package of economic reforms in recent decades into law, that change no longer seems like just an administrative adjustment.
On the contrary, it becomes one of the least explained decisions in a process of institutional reorganization that can now be interpreted as part of the strategy with which the regime seeks to adapt its legal framework to the survival demands of a struggling economic model.
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