Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez was formally named Cuba’s
new President on Thursday April 19,2018 as 86-year-old President Raul Castro stepped
down, after finishing his second full five-year term.
Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel has served as the vice-president of Cuba since 2013.
The Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, have together been in power for nearly 60 years since the Cuba’s Communist revolution in 1959 overthrew the US-backed dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista.
Symbolically, this generational transfer of power therefore carries tremendous weight as the silver-haired 58-year-old is neither a revolutionary nor a Castro — the name that generations of Cubans have associated with supreme leadership.
Born to a family of factory workers on April 20, 1960 — just over a year after the revolution and the swearing in of Fidel Castro as the President — Diaz-Canel studied electrical engineering and began his political career in his early twenties as a member of the Young Communist League in the Cuban city of Santa Clara. By the age of 33, he had become the Secretary of the League in Santa Clara.
Since then, he made his mark by working at various levels of the government. He gained prominence in central Villa Clara province as the top Communist party official, a post equivalent to that of a governor. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in Holguín province and was promoted to the Politburo of the Party.
Diaz-Canel was appointed Minister of Higher Education in May 2009, a position from which he was released in March 2012 when he became the Vice President of the Council of Ministers. Hard-working, modest-living, unsmiling technocrat dedicated to public services is the kind of image that he seems to have been cultivating — all the while keeping a rather low-profile. Until recently, a majority of Cubans saw their vice-president as an uncharismatic figure with a public profile that was next to non-existent.
It is difficult to make assumptions about his views. In the video of private Communist Party Meeting that leaked to the public last August, Diaz-Canel expressed a series of orthodox positions of the Communist Party including a vow to shut down critical, independent media and implied that certain European embassies were outposts of foreign subversion. But he is also known to have defended academics and bloggers who are targets of hardliners, leading some to see him a potential advocate for freedom of expression and greater media openness in a system intolerant of virtually any criticism or dissent.
Popularly, his techno-savviness, enjoyment of rock music and support for LGBT rights also cast him in a modern light. At the same time, however, he ascended the Communist Party ranks by saying and doing the right things and by gaining the blessing of the Castros and the top brass.
While many do expect Diaz-Canel to usher in reforms, it is continuity rather than change, which he represents more, at least in the short term. Commentators have noted that he has been groomed by the Castros as an internal candidate, somewhat akin to the future CEO of a big company. His succession has been a carefully managed one, through state media and social media using words like continuity and unity and tweeting under the hashtag #SomosContinuidad (We are continuity).
Meanwhile, 86-year-old Raul Castro will continue to retain power as the head of the Communist party, which has been designated by the constitution as “the superior guiding force of society and the state,” and the Chief of the Army.
As he prepares to take the reins of the nation, Diaz-Canel would lack the revolutionary appeal of his predecessors but he certainly has his work cut out — the biggest immediate challenge being the disarrayed Cuban economy, which has been on the slide for years and must gradually transition from a closed economy to a mixed one.
Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel has served as the vice-president of Cuba since 2013.
The Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, have together been in power for nearly 60 years since the Cuba’s Communist revolution in 1959 overthrew the US-backed dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista.
Symbolically, this generational transfer of power therefore carries tremendous weight as the silver-haired 58-year-old is neither a revolutionary nor a Castro — the name that generations of Cubans have associated with supreme leadership.
Born to a family of factory workers on April 20, 1960 — just over a year after the revolution and the swearing in of Fidel Castro as the President — Diaz-Canel studied electrical engineering and began his political career in his early twenties as a member of the Young Communist League in the Cuban city of Santa Clara. By the age of 33, he had become the Secretary of the League in Santa Clara.
Since then, he made his mark by working at various levels of the government. He gained prominence in central Villa Clara province as the top Communist party official, a post equivalent to that of a governor. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in Holguín province and was promoted to the Politburo of the Party.
Diaz-Canel was appointed Minister of Higher Education in May 2009, a position from which he was released in March 2012 when he became the Vice President of the Council of Ministers. Hard-working, modest-living, unsmiling technocrat dedicated to public services is the kind of image that he seems to have been cultivating — all the while keeping a rather low-profile. Until recently, a majority of Cubans saw their vice-president as an uncharismatic figure with a public profile that was next to non-existent.
It is difficult to make assumptions about his views. In the video of private Communist Party Meeting that leaked to the public last August, Diaz-Canel expressed a series of orthodox positions of the Communist Party including a vow to shut down critical, independent media and implied that certain European embassies were outposts of foreign subversion. But he is also known to have defended academics and bloggers who are targets of hardliners, leading some to see him a potential advocate for freedom of expression and greater media openness in a system intolerant of virtually any criticism or dissent.
Popularly, his techno-savviness, enjoyment of rock music and support for LGBT rights also cast him in a modern light. At the same time, however, he ascended the Communist Party ranks by saying and doing the right things and by gaining the blessing of the Castros and the top brass.
While many do expect Diaz-Canel to usher in reforms, it is continuity rather than change, which he represents more, at least in the short term. Commentators have noted that he has been groomed by the Castros as an internal candidate, somewhat akin to the future CEO of a big company. His succession has been a carefully managed one, through state media and social media using words like continuity and unity and tweeting under the hashtag #SomosContinuidad (We are continuity).
Meanwhile, 86-year-old Raul Castro will continue to retain power as the head of the Communist party, which has been designated by the constitution as “the superior guiding force of society and the state,” and the Chief of the Army.
As he prepares to take the reins of the nation, Diaz-Canel would lack the revolutionary appeal of his predecessors but he certainly has his work cut out — the biggest immediate challenge being the disarrayed Cuban economy, which has been on the slide for years and must gradually transition from a closed economy to a mixed one.
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