Diaz-Canel

HAVANA — The man tapped as the likely heir-apparent to Raul Castro is largely unknown off the island, but his rise to the country’s No. 2 job was anything but meteoric.

Miguel Diaz-Canel has spent 30 years gradually paying his dues behind the scenes, earning a reputation as a Communist Party loyalist and rising through the ranks to a succession of ever-higher posts.

“He is not an upstart or improvised,” President Raul Castro said Sunday in a speech to lawmakers in which he laid out the reasons for his choice. In the past, Castro has praised Diaz-Canel’s “solid ideological firmness.”

Tall, dapper and carefully groomed with a 52-year-old’s salt-and-pepper hair, Diaz-Canel presents a serious public face before TV cameras, even as some people who know him describe him as a sharp-minded jokester who can be surprisingly relaxed in private. Others, particularly those off the island, described him in less flattering terms.

“I think it’s interesting because Diaz-Canel is not a charismatic person,” said Alejandro Barreras, who runs a blog in Miami called On Two Shores that advocates for a normalization of relations US-Cuban relations. Diaz-Canel’s profile has risen recently as he has repeatedly appeared on state TV newscasts.