Ramiro Valdés, revolutionary commander who built Cuba's intelligence apparatus, dies at 94

Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, a deputy prime minister and one of the few remaining historic figures of the Cuban revolution, died on the morning of Sunday, 21 June 2026, in Havana. President Miguel Díaz-Canel confirmed the death on social media, calling the loss one that "hurts deeply, like that of a father." No cause of death was given. Valdés was 94.

A life inside the revolution

Born on 28 April 1932 in Artemisa, Valdés joined Fidel Castro's insurgent cause at age 21. He was lightly wounded during the 26 July 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks, the failed uprising that launched the rebellion against Fulgencio Batista. After a period of imprisonment and exile in Mexico, he was among 82 men who sailed the yacht Granma to Cuba on 2 December 1956. Only 12 survived the landing; Valdés, the Castro brothers and the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara were among them.

Valdés became Guevara's deputy commander in the Sierra Maestra and fought alongside him at the decisive Battle of Santa Clara in the final days before Batista fled on 1 January 1959. He remained in olive-green fatigues for the rest of his career, a reserved military figure who once said that Guevara was "one of my bosses in life."

Architect of the G2

After the revolutionary victory, Valdés was appointed interior minister and founded the Dirección General de Inteligencia, known as the G2, the state security and intelligence service. In a rare 2018 television interview, he admitted the reach of the apparatus he built: "No one moved that security didn't know about it, and that allowed us to infiltrate counterrevolutionary organizations and escalate."

“As interior minister, Valdés dealt with the hardest phase of the confrontation in the years after 1959.”

He headed the Interior Ministry during two periods, 1961–1968 and 1979–1985, and maintained close ties with the KGB in the Soviet era. To opponents and human-rights activists, he was the architect of the island's repressive control system. In 2021, he decorated police who had cracked down on the mass citizen protests that year.

Titles and later years

Valdés held the honorary ranks of Commander of the Revolution, Hero of the Republic, and Hero of Labour. He remained on the Communist Party's Political Bureau until 2019 and, even as Raúl Castro handed the presidency to Díaz-Canel in 2018, stayed in government as deputy prime minister with a focus on the energy crisis. He was not seen in public since last year.

Reactions

Raúl Castro, now 95, had praised Valdés in 2018 for "his loyalty to the Revolution and to Fidel, his dedication to work, modesty and simplicity." Díaz-Canel's message on X concluded with the revolutionary salute: "Until victory, always, Commander!" Official state media described him as "deserving of the respect and admiration of the Cuban people for his dedication and proven loyalty to the revolutionary cause."