Bloody legacy of an executioner
By: Pedro Corzo - 26/06/2026
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Ramiro Valdés Menendez, the man who greased the macabre machinery of Castro's totalitarianism with the blood of the thousands of men he shot and the hundreds of thousands he imprisoned, has died.
He participated with the Castros in the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks and in the expedition during which the Granma yacht sank. In the Sierra Maestra, he carried out the mission of spying on comrades and enemies, the same task he undertook in Mexico among his fellow expeditionaries. He had a knack for espionage; in Cuban slang, he was the quintessential informer.
I held very important positions under the Castro regime. Member of the national executive of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), twice Minister of the Interior, Deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power, member of the Political Bureau, First Deputy Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), Minister of Information Technology and Communications, and head of the Construction and Basic Industry sectors, along with other government responsibilities.
From 1961 to 1969 he commanded the Ministry of the Interior, a position he resumed from 1978 to 1985, being replaced by the vice-minister-general, José Abrantes, who died in prison.
Commander Jaime Costa, who was a childhood friend of Ramiro Valdés, states that the first KGB specialists to enter Cuba who spoke Spanish, in April 1959, did so through Valdés's efforts.
He was the founder of the Ministry of the Interior, establishing close collaboration with his counterparts in the former Soviet bloc that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in some cases, for several years longer. Documents archived by the Stasi, the GDR's secret police, attest to the close cooperation between the repressive forces and the various supplies that the German repressive entity sent to its counterparts in Havana. A similar relationship existed with the Soviet KGB.
Valdés instituted surveillance in Cuba, targeting not only ordinary citizens but also high-ranking members of the regime. No diplomat, official, businessman, or foreign personality escaped being spied on in Cuba. Another significant aspect of Valdés's regime was the high level of corruption, with "Ramirito" being the most corrupt.
It is important to note that the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Cuban government and member of the Political Bureau was one of the main enforcers of Castro's subversion in the hemisphere. The incursions of the Cuban revolution's henchmen into Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Colombia, and the rest of the countries on the continent were carried out with Valdés's advice.
Valdés was the first military chief of Las Villas under Castroism, later assuming the direction of the Department of Investigations of the Rebel Army (DIER), repressors par excellence and the first breeding ground of State Security and instructors in subversion.
State Security, created by Valdés, is an organization that has imprisoned more than half a million men and women, executed approximately six thousand people, and caused the disappearance of several hundred. They have a license to arrest and kill, condemn without trial, and execute without evidence—Ramiro's most significant legacy.
The commander of the Sierra Maestra, Huber Matos, declared that Ramiro had a bad reputation for being repressive, even before the triumph of the insurrection. Matos recounts that, during his arrest in Camagüey, Valdés constantly pointed a pistol at him and was the one who took him prisoner to the capital.
The raids, convictions, and executions were carried out by the "Ramiritos," as Dariel Alarcón called them. Ricardo Boffill claimed that veteran communists with a history of violence and murder, such as Isidoro Malmierca and Osvaldo Sánchez, joined the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) through Valdés, handing over information on the political activities of citizens of interest that the Popular Socialist Party had accumulated over the years.
Ramiro's agents acted with complete impunity, disregarding the most basic civil rights. They carried out raids on thousands of people without any judicial oversight. It is estimated that during the Bay of Pigs invasion, more than 250,000 people were arrested and confined in sports fields, schools, and social clubs.
Between 1960 and 1975, Ramiro Valdés ordered the forced displacement of thousands of peasants from different rural areas of Cuba, particularly from the mountainous region of Escambray, creating the sadly famous "Captive Villages".
Massacres like the one at "La Ceiba" in the Escambray Mountains, where 19 men were executed with a .30 caliber machine gun, were not uncommon. For the minister and his followers, the conviction that a suspect was guilty made any sentence possible. He established concentration camps throughout the country, including "La Sierrita," "Arroyo Blanco," "El Condado," and many more, with peasants suffering the most.
Subsequently, he collaborated closely with the Ministry of the Armed Forces to put into operation the sadistic Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), where thousands of young people were brutally mistreated.
Valdés introduced highly sophisticated torture methods into his interrogations. These included the application of sodium pentothal (known as truth serum), temperature changes, prolonged isolation, and extremely aggressive psychological methods to destabilize prisoners, including electroshock therapy, in addition to brutal beatings. Numerous prisoners held in the Topes de Collantes hospital, which had been converted into a prison, were tied up and thrown from helicopters into a lagoon near the former hospital. These tortures were also carried out in other lakes and marshes on the island.
Manuel de Beunza says that, besides being a murderer, Ramiro was a sadist. He liked to visit prisons, particularly the lesser-known ones, such as those that were at the exclusive disposal of the Technical Investigations Department, where detainees could remain indefinitely without being brought before a judge.
Prison conditions under Valdés's command were not only harsh, but could have led to genocide if any event in the country threatened the system's survival. Following Fidel Castro's orders, he placed thousands of pounds of TNT in the tunnels of the four circular cellblocks and in the dining hall of the Isle of Pines National Prison for Men, with instructions to detonate the explosives in the event of an uprising or an external attack. For more than 20 months, 5,000 political prisoners slept on what was essentially a bed of explosives.
Valdés was the Castro regime's star advisor on repression in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and previously had served as such for Daniel Ortega and Humberto Ortega in long-suffering Nicaragua. His knowledge of violent tactics was invaluable.
Officials from the Ministry of the Interior (Minint) and State Security (G-2) have been an elite within the regime. They enjoy prerogatives and privileges that high-ranking officials in other government structures do not have. An officer from these agencies is far more important than their counterpart in the Armed Forces; their status as high priests of totalitarianism allows them to intimidate, detain, and eliminate any heretic with impunity. This is the true power in a regime like Castro's. Ramiro held this power until his death.
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