Raul Castro

Ron Paul took a risky position in Florida in Thursday's debate, calling for communication and diplomatic relations with Cuba, saying that people's positions have changed dramatically over the last few years. Paul said that Cuba isn't going to invade the U.S. any time soon, and that Americans weren't looking under their beds anymore, worried. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich followed by pledging to continue the economic embargo on Cuba and to take any action short of military invasion to upend the government of Raul Castro.

Since succeeding his brother Fidel as president in 2008, Raul Castro has repeatedly promised to adopt market reforms intended to help save Cuba's ailing economy. And he has delivered, for the most part, slowly but steadily. The year he took over, Castro made it easier for Cubans to buy cellphones. Last year, the government agreed to increase the number of permits issued for privately run barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants and other businesses in the hopes of spurring grass-roots economic activity.

They began with a hose and a few rags when Amilcar Santa Cruz and his 30 siblings and cousins set up a carwash in Havana's Miramar district, a little family business to help make ends meet. And that's all it was for several years. But in the last few months, the business has exploded. The carwash today is a bustling piece of new Cuban enterprise, complete with metal roofing, fluorescent lighting, a cafe and a full line of air fresheners to hang from the rearview mirror. "Everyone here is real hardworking," Santa Cruz said.

Last week, Cuban President Raul Castro endorsed sweeping economic reforms, proposed term limits for government and Communist Party officials, and conceded that the party's failure to groom a new generation of leaders will make it harder to find a successor. The proposed reforms could usher in major changes. For the first time since the 1959 revolution, the government would allow Cubans to own and sell houses and cars. Taxis, barbershops, restaurants and other privately run businesses would be allowed to expand and hire workers.

With a huge military parade and amid high public expectation, Cuba's ruling Communists on Saturday convened an extraordinary congress that will shape much of the island nation's future. The Cuban Communist Party opened its four-day gathering — its first in 14 years and only the sixth meeting since the revolution 52 years ago — to examine and endorse crucial economic reforms launched by President Raul Castro. The congress will also appoint a new team of party leaders, with Castro at the helm but, possibly, with a smattering of less-familiar faces as Cubans begin to contemplate a Cuba without Raul and his brother, Fidel, the leader of the revolution.

Alberto Granado, who accompanied Ernesto "Che" Guevara on a 1952 journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalized in Guevara's memoir and on screen in "The Motorcycle Diaries," has died in Cuba. He was 88. Granado, an Argentine biochemist who had lived in Cuba since 1961, died Saturday of natural causes, according to Cuban state-run television, which gave no other details. Granado and Guevara's road trip, begun on a broken-down British Norton motorcycle they dubbed La Poderosa, or "The Powerful," awoke in Guevara the social consciousness and political convictions that helped turn him into one of the most iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century.

POP MUSIC MillionYoung / Teen Daze Catch techno wizard Mike Diaz ? who crafts electronic dreamscapes heavy with wistful, wintry elements under the name MillionYoung ? as he pairs up with Pitchfork darling Teen Daze ? who makes shoe-gazey, lo-fi electronica. Spaceland , 1717 Silver Lake Blvd., 8:30 p.m. $10. (323) 661-4380; http://www.clubspaceland.com MOVIES South of the Border The provocative filmmaker Oliver Stone will attend this screening to discuss his "political road movie," in which he traverses South America and Cuba and speaks with leftist political leaders including Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Raul Castro.

Cuban President Raul Castro has been moving slowly but steadily over the last couple of years to relax his government's grip on the country's ailing economy, yet it is the news that half a million state workers will get pink slips in the coming months and will be expected to find jobs in the private sector that has created a front-page buzz in the United States. Change is underway in the Cuban economy. It is time for Congress to end the archaic and ineffectual U.S. trade embargo and get out of the way of U.S. investment in Cuba before American firms lose out to those from Europe, Brazil and elsewhere.

Alan Gross usually celebrates Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year that started at sundown Wednesday, by playing mandolin in the klezmer band that accompanies his guitar-strumming rabbi in the High Holiday service. But this year, Gross is imprisoned in Cuba, where he has been held since Dec. 4 in a bizarre Cold War-style case that has become the latest irritant between Washington and its longtime nemesis in Havana. State security arrested the 60-year-old amateur musician and professional aid worker at the Havana airport after he allegedly provided unauthorized satellite Internet connections to Cuba's tiny Jewish community.

At least one life saved. Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas ended a hunger strike following the announcement that 52 political prisoners would be freed from jail under a deal Spain and the Roman Catholic Church negotiated with the government of President Raul Castro. The agreement came too late for Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of conscience who died in February on a hunger strike protesting mistreatment, but just in time for the 48-year-old Farinas. A psychologist and journalist, Farinas was seeking the release of other political prisoners.