Overview
- President Miguel Díaz‑Canel announced on Sunday, June 21, that Ramiro Valdés had died at 94 and did not give a cause of death.
- Valdés was a veteran of the revolution who fought at Moncada, sailed on the Granma in 1956 and served as a deputy commander under Che Guevara.
- As interior minister in the 1960s he built the security apparatus that became known as G2 and in a 2018 interview said the service tracked almost all public movement.
- He held senior roles for decades, including two terms as interior minister, a period as vice president and membership in the Communist Party Political Bureau until 2019, and had not been seen in public since last year.
- His passing both underlines the end of the original revolutionary generation and raises questions about how power, state security practices and Cuba’s ties with allies such as Venezuela will evolve under younger leaders.