Miguel Díaz-Canel

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (born on April 20, 1960 in Placetas, Villa Clara, province of Cuba) is a Cuban politician and university professor who serves as the President of the Republic of Cuba since October 10, 2019.

He has been a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba since 1997 and held the position of Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012. He was later promoted to the position of Vice President of the Council of Ministers in 2012. One year later, on February 24, 2013, he was elected First Vice President of the Council and therefore, the second in the line of succession to the executive power of Cuba.

Trained as an electrical engineer in 1982, he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, where he remained until 1985. Starting in April of that year, he was a professor at the "Marta Abreu" University of Las Villas. In 1987, he completed an international mission in Nicaragua as the first secretary of "The Union of Communist Youth (UJC)" Villa Clara. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a member of the national committee of the UJC and the second secretary under the first secretary Roberto Robaina.

In 1993, he began working in the Communist Party of Cuba and a year later was elected as the first secretary of the Party Provincial Committee in the province of Villa Clara. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in the province of Holguín.

He was appointed Minister of Higher Education by Raúl Castro in May 2009, a position he held until March 22, 2012, when he became Vice President of the Council of Ministers to oversee the areas of science, education, culture, and sports.

Díaz-Canel has two children from a previous marriage and is married to Lis Cuesta Peraza, a graduate of the Institute of Pedagogical Sciences of Holguin.