Miguel Díaz-Canel

April 20, 1960

Cuban engineer and Communist politician who succeeded Raúl Castro as head of state in 2018 and as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2021.

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Biography

Miguel Díaz-Canel was born in Placetas, in Villa Clara, in 1960, the son of a schoolteacher and a lathe operator. He graduated in electrical engineering from the Central University of Las Villas in 1982 and, after three years of military service, taught engineering there from 1985.

He rose through the Communist Party as first secretary of its provincial committee in Villa Clara from 1994 and in Holguín from 2003, the year he joined the Politburo. He became Minister of Higher Education in 2009, a vice president of the Council of Ministers in 2012 and First Vice President of the Council of State in 2013, acting as Raúl Castro's senior deputy.

In April 2018 the National Assembly elected him to succeed Castro as president of the Council of State, the first Cuban leader born after the revolution. Under the 2019 constitution he became President of the Republic, and in April 2021 he succeeded Castro as First Secretary of the party. He answered the July 2021 protests by calling government supporters into the streets, oversaw the 2022 Family Code that legalised same-sex marriage, and has led Cuba through severe shortages and blackouts that he blames on the US embargo; the United States placed sanctions on him in 2025.