The leader of Cuba at the moment is politician Miguel Mario Dáz-Canel Bermudez. He had been the Council of State and Council of Ministers’ first Vice President since 2013. Daz-Canal, a Placetas native, attended the Central University of Las Villas for his education before enlisting in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. He began working as a professor at his alma university in 1985, and two years later, he went to Nicaragua as the organization’s first secretary. Daz-Canel, who has had a political bent since his undergraduate days, joined the Communist Party of Cuba in 1993 and was chosen to serve as the first secretary of the provincial party committee for the province of Villa Clara the following year. He was admitted to the Politburo in 2003. He was appointed to the position of Vice President of the Council of Ministers a few years after he first entered Ral Castro’s cabinet in 2009 as the Minister of Higher Education. Dáz-Canel was appointed as the Council of State’s first Vice President in 2013. Daz-Canel was chosen to succeed Ral Castro after he opted to resign as president of Cuba in April 2018 owing to his deteriorating health. On April 19, 2018, he was sworn in as president.
Early Childhood & Life
On April 20, 1960, in the Placetas municipality of Villa Clara, Cuba, Dáz-Canel was born. Miguel Dáz-Canel, a mechanical plant worker from Santa Clara, and Ada Bermudez were his parents. He was born in 1959, a year before Fidel Castro became president of Cuba, which was then undergoing fast change.
Daz-Canel, who came from a working-class family, benefited from the revolution. The school system, which had deteriorated under Fulgencio Batista’s leadership and became sluggish and corrupt, was entirely overhauled by Castro. It significantly aided Dáz-Canel, who excelled academically, in obtaining a decent education.
He enrolled in the University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villas in Santa Clara, Cuba, after graduating from high school to study electronics engineering, and he received his degree in 1982. In order to complete his required three years of military service, Dáz-Canel then enlisted in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. He entered politics as soon as he was released from the military.
Miguel Daz-Canel’s Career
Miguel Daz-Canel joined the Young Communists’ Union in 1987 and quickly worked his way through the ranks before being chosen to serve as the first party secretary in the Villa Clara region. His commitment is attested to by his former neighbors. He allegedly refused to relocate to the bigger mansions intended for the officials in that position.
He supported Gay rights in a nation where there is still widespread hostility against homosexuality and was very skilled at his work. He was appointed to the same position in the more affluent Holguin Province of Cuba in 2003.
He was immediately elevated to the politburo, the Communist Party’s ruling council. He worked closely with Fidel Castro.
During that time, Cuba was going through a number of dramatic changes. The nation faced severe economic issues in the early 2000s. Hugo Chavez, a socialist and anti-imperialist, was elected president of Venezuela in 1999, which relieved a lot of Cuba’s pressure. Fidel Castro struck a historic arrangement in which he agreed to give medical aid to Venezuela in exchange for oil.
Several additional South American nations, including Bolivia, Panama, and Brazil, elected left-leaning governments over the following few years. Building ties with these nations on an economic, social, and political level was a priority for Fidel and his politburo. The victory of left-wing governments, sometimes known as the “Pink Tide,” showed that South American citizens wanted to break away from the neo-liberal economic system.
The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), founded in December 2004 by Cuba and Venezuela, aims to conserve the region’s agriculture, transfer wealth equitably among its members, and fight economic liberalization and privatization. The majority of South American nations joined ALBA in the years that followed, bringing about significant economic prosperity on the continent. In February 2008, Ral Castro won the election to succeed Fidel Castro as president of Cuba.
Prior to entering politics, Daz-Canel worked as an engineering professor at his alma school, the University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villas. He also maintained a distinct career path in the field of teaching. He was chosen to serve as Raul Castro’s government’s Minister of Higher Education in May 2009.
He changed several things inside the ministry. Daz-Canel, an enthusiastic iPad user himself, aimed to modernize the outdated Cuban educational system. His advocacy for greater technology in Cuba’s underfunded classrooms and his status as one of the first senior government officials to bring a laptop to meetings received accolades from the local media in Cuba.
Dáz-Canel frequently published pieces about his travels to schools across the nation in Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee. He urged the instructors to preserve Fidel’s legacy of free education during his visit to Santiago de Cuba, the city in the southeast of the island where Fidel Castro’s ashes were interred. He said, “If we took the oath that Fidel would always be among us… this effort must become a bastion.”
Prior to being selected as the Vice President of the Council of Ministers (deputy prime minister) on March 22, 2012, he served as Minister of Higher Education. As a result, he was the first person to hold the position who was born after the revolution.
He was granted the additional task of being the country’s first Vice President in 2013, reporting directly to Ral Castro. There have been other potential Castro heirs throughout the years, but none received as much attention as Daz-Canel. They promoted him to progressively more significant positions in the administration as they groomed him.
Dáz-Canel met with the leaders of Mexico, Germany, Spain, India, Pakistan, South Africa, El Salvador, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, and the Vatican, according to reports in the state media. He has served as the leader of Cuban delegations to the 2016 Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States as well as to Russia, Japan, China, North Korea, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Angola.
Early in 2018, Ral Castro declared his intention to step down as president. Dáz-Canel was chosen as the sole candidate to succeed Ral on April 18, 2018. The next day, the Cuban National Assembly voted on the issue, and Daz-Canel was formally sworn in as the country’s future leader. On the same day, he took the oath of office. Ral Castro continues to serve as the Communist Party of Cuba’s First Secretary notwithstanding Dáz-election Canel as the country’s new leader.
Philosophies of politics
Unlike his predecessors, whose lives are generally known, Daz-Canel is shrouded in mystery, and that is on purpose. Christopher Sabatini, a lecturer in international politics and policy at Columbia University in New York, US, claims that the Cuban government has taken care to project the image of a man who is a fervent communist but who can also pass for relevant to Cuba’s younger population.
In the few public speeches he has given, Dáz-Canel has expressed his commitment to the Marxist-Leninist philosophy that serves as the foundation of the Cuban revolution as well as his clear mistrust of the American government. Speaking on the occasion of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s 50th death anniversary, he repeated the revolutionary narrative of Argentina by saying, “Imperialism can never be trusted, not even a little bit, never.”
Dáz-Canel was heard condemning the embassies of the United States, Norway, Spain, Germany, and Britain for sponsoring “subversive activity” on the island in a tape that was leaked by Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles in the middle of 2017. He vowed to suppress independent media and crack down on dissidents.
Cuba is currently in a perilous position in world affairs. Its relations with the US have deteriorated since the latter, following the tentative détente announced by Castro and Barack Obama in 2014, accused the former of being “responsible” for a number of mysterious health issues affecting US embassy personnel on the island and called back several diplomats. Due to internal problems, one of its oldest allies, Venezuela, has drastically reduced the hefty subsidy on oil shipments to Cuba.
Cuban President Miguel Daz-Canel promised to modernize the economy in his inaugural speech. He supports expanding access to the internet. Ral Castro has stated that he anticipates Dáz-Canel to serve in the position for two periods of five years each and succeed him as the party’s First Secretary after he retires in 2021.
Miguel’s Individual Life
Dáz-Canel has been married twice. During his first union with Martha, he fathered two children. Liz Cuesta, his second and current spouse, is a professor with expertise in Cuban culture. Fact Dáz-Canel has said he admires the British rock bands The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
Estimated Net Worth
Unknown.