MIGUEL DIAZ-CANEL IS NEW CHIEF OF COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA

In many ways, Cuba’s new maximum leader is nothing like those who have governed the island for the past six decades.

Miguel Díaz-Canel was never a guerrilla fighter and was for only a few years, like all Cubans of his generation, a soldier.

He rose peacefully and diligently through the approved channels. And he isn’t named Castro.

On Monday (Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Manila), Cuba’s Communist Party congress — as expected — chose Díaz-Canel to be its leader, adding that crucial post to the title of president he assumed in 2018.

In both cases, he replaces his mentor Raul Castro, 89, sealing a political dynasty that had held power since the 1959 revolution, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Díaz-Canel, who turns 61 on Tuesday, is a relative youngster compared to members of the generation that accompanied Fidel Castro in his battle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and then stayed on in power for decade after decade while cementing a Soviet-style political system.

Born a year after the revolution in the west-central city of Santa Clara, he reportedly dabbled as a youth in minor unconformities — wearing long hair and following The Beatles in a communist nation tightly aligned with the Soviet Union that then frowned upon them as an instrument of cultural imperialism.

He earned an engineering degree and dedicated himself to official politics, rising to a senior post in the Union of Young Communists and then through a series of bureaucratic positions in Cuba’s provinces, where he gained a reputation as a pragmatic administrator with an amiable, informal manner in dealing with the public.

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