There are two very different visions of the young Raúl Castro who fought alongside his older brother Fidel and Che Guevara against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista more than five decades ago.

Some recall a guerrilla leader whose zone of operations in the eastern Sierra was the best organised among the Castros’ July 26 rebel movement, and that the local population was also the best cared for. For others he was Mr Hyde to Fidel’s Dr Jekyll, ruthlessly ordering executions after Batista fled Havana on New Year’s Eve 1959 having bid farewell to his nation with the curious: “?Salud! ?Salud!” (Good health and good luck!)

Either way, the 79-year-old is now more likely to go down in history as the man who tried to save Cuban communism from itself – by turning to capitalism. This week the government announced it is to shed 500,000 workers, who will instead have to become self-employed or start co-operatives in just six months. As Raúl said: “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working.” The measures will eventually lead to 1m, or a fifth of the labour force, working in the private sector, and represents the biggest shake-up of the Cuban state since 1968, when all shops, from hamburger joints to street vendors, were nationalised.