Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (born on April 20, 1960, in Placetas, Villa Clara, Cuba) is a Cuban politician and university professor who has served 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 served as Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012, after which he was promoted to the position of Vice President of the Council of Ministers in 2012. A year later, on February 24, 2013, he was elected first vice president of the Council, making him the second in the line of succession for Cuba's executive power.
He graduated as an electrical engineer in 1982 when he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, where he served until 1985. Starting in April of that year, he became 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 Young Communists (UJC)" in Villa Clara. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a member of the national committee of the UJC and served as the second secretary under the first secretary Roberto Robaina.
In 1993, he began working with the Communist Party of Cuba, and a year later, he was elected as the first secretary of the Provincial Party Committee in Villa Clara province. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in Holguín province.
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, responsible for 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 Holguín Institute of Pedagogical Sciences.
