He has been ruling Cuba since 2018, after the Castros. He was elected as head of state on April 19, 2018. Díaz-Canel, who was elected president for the second time in April 2023 after 2018, will hold this position for another 5 years.
Dial-Canez, an unknown name when he was appointed to the Cuban Council of State in 2013, later became Raul Castro's right-hand man.
He had been preparing for the Presidency and the transfer of power for the last five years. However, Diaz-Canel, 57, had a long political career before becoming Vice President.
Born in April 1960, Diaz-Canel studied electrical engineering and began his political career in his 20s at the Young Communist League in Santa Clara.
Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel y Bermúdez (born 20 April 1960) is a Cuban politician and engineer who is the 3rd and current First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. 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.
While teaching engineering at the university, Diaz-Canel gradually rose through the ranks in the Communist League and became Deputy General Secretary at the age of 33.
Raul Castro praised Diaz-Canel for his "ideological solidity".
2018
The Cuban National Assembly, in its meeting that ended the Castro era in the country, selected Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel as the sole candidate in the vote for President Raul Castro's successor.
Thus, the vote in the Parliament turned into a formality.
Following the vote, it was the first time since the revolution in 1959 that Castro was no longer in charge of the country.
86-year-old Raul Castro officially handed over his duties to Diaz-Canel.
However, Raul Castro served as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 2021.
April 2023
Diaz-Canel, leader of the Cuban Communist Party, the only political party in Cuba, received 97.66 percent of the votes in the 470-member National Assembly of People's Power for his second term.
Miguel Diaz-Canel thanked the MPs for their support in the press statement. "We must take on this enormous challenge without slowing down," Diaz-Canel, 62, said, reaffirming his administration's commitment to Castro's revolution.