Cuba’s Communist Party appoints Miguel Diaz-Canel as first non-Castro leader since 1959

Cuba’s ruling Communist Party has elected President Miguel Diaz-Canel as party first secretary, marking the first time in more than six decades that the country will be run by a person who is not a member of the Castro family.

Mr Diaz-Canel’s election to the most powerful position in the country at the Communist Party’s conference on Monday brought an end to an era led by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro.

As a career politician who worked his way through the party ranks, the 60-year-old represents a break from the Communist Party’s past two leaders - who rose to power in the leftist 1959 Cuban revolution which led to the downfall of authoritarian leader Gen Fulgencio Batista.