José Ramón Fernández

José Ramón Fernández was a career officer who graduated in 1947 from the Cadet School of Cuba and the Artillery School, and completed further general staff courses in Cuba and in the United States. After Batista's coup of March 10, 1952, he joined conspiracy activities against the Batista government with various military and political groups. In 1956 he was caught when the conspiracy known as "Los puros" was uncovered, tried before a military court, sentenced, and held at the Presidio Modelo on the Isle of Pines, where he remained until the revolutionary victory of January 1, 1959, serving almost three years.

From 1959 he held a series of posts in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR): director of the Rebel Army Cadet School, head of the School of Militia Officers in Matanzas and of the Schools of Militia Battalions of Havana province, chief of the Directorate of Combat Preparation, and deputy minister of FAR until 1970. He then moved into education, serving as first deputy minister of education until 1972 and as minister of education from 1972 to 1990, roughly two decades in charge of Cuban education administration. He was a founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, sat on its Central Committee from its first congress in 1975, and was an alternate member of the Political Bureau from 1980 to 1991. From 1976 he was a deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power until his death, and a member of the Council of State from 1981 to 1993. In sport, he chaired the organizing committees of the 1982 Central American and Caribbean Games and the 1991 Pan American Games in Havana, and presided over the Cuban Olympic Committee from 1997 until October 2018, when he was named its honorary life president.