Miguel Díaz-Canel

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (born 20 April 1960) is a Cuban politician and engineer who is the 8th and current First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since 2021, and as well as the 17th President of Cuba since 2019. As First Secretary, he is the most powerful person in the Cuban government. Díaz-Canel succeeds the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, making him the first non-Castro leader of Cuba since the revolution, and as well as the first non-Castro head of state since 1976.

Díaz-Canel has been a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party since 2003, and served as Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012. He was promoted to the post of Vice President of the Council of Ministers (Deputy Prime Minister) in 2012. A year later, in 2013, he was elected as First Vice President of the Council of State. He succeeded Raúl Castro as the President of the Council of State in 2018; in December 2019 the office would evolve into President of the Republic. On 19 April 2021 Díaz-Canel assumed the reins of the Communist Party of Cuba, when he replaced Raúl Castro as First Secretary.

Early life
Díaz-Canel was born on 20 April 1960 in Placetas, Villa Clara, to Aída Bermúdez, a schoolteacher, and Miguel Limón, a mechanical plant worker in Santa Clara, Cuba. He is of direct paternal Spanish (Asturian) descent; his great-grandfather Ramón Limón left Castropol, Asturias (Spain) for Havana in the late 19th century.

He graduated from Central University of Las Villas in 1982 as an electronics engineer and thereupon joined the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Beginning in April 1985, he taught engineering at his alma mater. In 1987, he completed an international mission in Nicaragua as First Secretary of the Young Communist League of Villa Clara.

Political career
In 1993, Díaz-Canel started work with the Communist Party of Cuba and a year later was elected First Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of Villa Clara Province (a top position higher than a governor). He gained a reputation for competence in this post, during which time it is reported that he supported LGBT rights at a time when many in the province frowned upon homosexuality. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in Holguín Province. In the same year, he was co-opted as a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Díaz-Canel was appointed Minister of Higher Education in May 2009, a position that he held until 22 March 2012, when he became Vice President of the Council of Ministers (deputy prime minister). In 2013 he additionally became First Vice President of the Council of State. As First Vice President of the Council of State, Díaz-Canel acted as deputy to the President, Raúl Castro.

Leader of Cuba (2018–present)
In 2018, the 86-year-old Castro stepped down from the position as president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, though he retained the most powerful position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and the commander-in-chief of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. On 18 April 2018, Díaz-Canel was selected as the only candidate to succeed Castro as president. He was confirmed by a vote of the National Assembly on 19 April and sworn in on the same day. Policy experts expected that he would pursue cautious reform of his predecessors' communist economic policies, while preserving the country's social structure. He is the first president born after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the first since 1976 not to be a member of the Castro family.

He received a visit from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro just two days after his inauguration. He met with Maduro again in May 2018 in Caracas, during his first official foreign visit as head of state. In his first multinational political trip since becoming president, Díaz-Canel traveled in November 2018 to visit all of Cuba's Eurasian allies. Diplomatic meetings were held in Russia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos. Brief stopovers in the United Kingdom and France also included meetings with British parliamentarians and French leaders. In March 2019, Díaz-Canel and his wife hosted Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall in Havana as the first British royals to visit the island.

In October 2019, Diaz-Canel became the President of the Republic of Cuba, an office that was recreated that February after a series of constitutional reforms were approved in a constitutional referendum. This office replaced the one he had held since April of the previous year, which was the President of the Council of State, which was previously the head of state of Cuba. The position of President of the Council of State became a less important position and is now carried out by Esteban Lazo Hernández in his authority as the President of the National Assembly of People's Power. Diaz-Canel's reforms among other things, limited the presidency to two consecutive five-year terms and banned discrimination based on gender, gender identity or sexual orientation. His government also reformed the country's Family Code in 2022, after a referendum was approved, which, among other things, legalised same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption and altruistic surrogacy. These policies have been described as the "most progressive" in Latin America. His administration has suppressed dissent, particularly surrounding the 2021 Cuban protests triggered by the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggested combatting the country's food crisis with pizza, guarapo and lemonade, changed the currency system. During the protests, he said: "The order of combat has been given - into the streets, revolutionaries!" On 19 April 2021, he officially became the First Secretary of the Communist Party following the resignation of Raúl Castro. This made him the leader of Cuba in fact as well as in name. It had been understood that Raúl retained the real power after ceding the presidency to Diaz-Canel in 2018. Diaz-Canel is the first non-Castro to lead the party since the Cuban revolution of 1959. BBC News stated that Díaz-Canel is loyal to the Castros' ideologies.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Cuban government blamed the United States for the crisis in Ukraine and backed Russia's right to "self-defense" against NATO expansion, but did not endorse the invasion, saying the conflict should be resolved diplomatically. Díaz-Canel visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow in November 2022, and the two leaders criticized Western sanctions against Cuba and Russia. They also opened a monument to Fidel Castro in one of the Moscow's districts.

On 19 April 2023, Díaz-Canel was re-elected by the National Assembly for a second five-year term as president, along with Salvador Valdés as vice president. Despite the difficult economic conditions facing the country, his re-election was widely expected and received widespread support from the Assembly members, with 97.66% backing Diaz-Canel's proposal and 93.4% supporting Valdés. The president was praised by the Assembly members for his leadership in difficult circumstances and for prioritizing collective work, innovation, and science.

In December 2023, Díaz-Canel condemned the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and called Israel a "terrorist state". He joined a pro-Palestine demonstration in Havana.

Awards

 * 🇦🇴 Angola
 * ANG_Order_of_Agostinho_Neto.svg Dr. António Agostinho Neto Order (2019)
 * 🇻🇪 Venezuela:
 * VEN_Order_of_the_Liberator_-_Grand_Cordon_BAR.png Collar of the Order of the Liberator (2018)
 * Vietnam:
 * Vietnam_Hochiminh_Order_ribbon.png Order of Ho Chi Minh (2018)
 * 🇲🇽 Mexico:
 * MEX_Orden_del_Aguila_Azteca_2011_Collar_BAR.svg Collar of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (2023)
 * 🇵🇹 Portugal:
 * PRT_Order_of_Prince_Henry_-_Grand_Collar_BAR.svg Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry (2023)

Personal life
Díaz-Canel has two children from his marriage to his first wife, Marta Villanueva, which ended in divorce. He currently resides with his second wife, Lis Cuesta.

On 23 March 2021, Díaz-Canel obtained a PhD in technical sciences, defending a thesis titled "Government Management System Based on Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Cuba."