José Ramón Machado Ventura
José Ramón Machado Ventura (born 26 October 1930 in San Antonio de las Vueltas, Las Villas Province) is Vice President of the Council of State of Cuba and Second Secretary of the ruling Communist Party. With the election of Raúl Castro as President Machado Ventura was his successor.
José Ramón Machado was in San Antonio de las Vueltas, located in the former province of Las Villas and born today belonging to the municipality of Camajuaní and went into Camajuaní and Remedios to school. At the University of Havana in 1953 he graduated as a doctor of medicine. Machado followed directly after the coup Fulgencio Batista on March 10, 1952, the emerging revolutionary movement, while he was still a medical student and was one of the first members of the 26th of July Movement to fight the dictatorship. Later, under the command of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro thereafter, he was one of the most original fighters who fought in the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra. In 1958 he was promoted to the command of Capitán Raúl Castro sent, who just tried to open a second front on the Sierra Cristal. There he was employed in the medical services and has established a network of hospitals and drug dispensaries and was promoted to the rank of major ( comandante ), which represented the highest rank of the rebel army.
After the victory of the revolution on January 1, 1959, he was Director of Medical Services in Havana and later from 1960 to 1967 Minister of Health. During this time he was responsible for the development of health care in Cuba. After a dispute with Fidel Castro about how the health sector is to lead, he was sent in January 1968 Delegate of the Politburo in the province of Matanzas and led this position until mid-1971. During his tenure there, the health, the local economy, in particular agriculture, public transport and child mortality developed positively. Then Machado was First Secretary of the Communist Party of Havana Province and was elected in December 1975 as a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba.
José Ramón Machado Ventura is a member of the Cuban National Assembly, representing the municipality of Guantánamo. Since 2006 he is responsible for the monitoring of internal training programs in Cuba. He is described as a hardliner communist ideology and a revolutionary of the old guard.
From Parliament Machado was determined on 24 February 2008 as the 1st Vice President of the State Council, at the same time as Raúl Castro was appointed to succeed his brother Fidel to diseased state and head of government. He received 601 of a total of 609 votes. His choice surprised some observers who expected someone younger in this position. On the VI. Congress of the Communist Party, the ruling and only legal party in Cuba, Machado was elected in April 2011 as the Second Secretary and assumed the previous function by Raúl Castro, who ( First Secretary ) succeeded his brother Fidel as party chairman.
At the inaugural meeting of the newly elected Cuban Parliament on February 24, 2013 Machado Ventura was re-elected to the office of Vice- President of the State Council. However, the Office of the Estonians Vizes he lost in the 30 years his junior Miguel Díaz- Canel.