Ramiro Valdés, one of the last men who fought in Cuba's 1959 revolution and the person who built Cuba's secret police force, died on June 21, 2026, at age 94. The Cuban government announced his death, according to AP News.

Valdés was part of a very small group that joined Fidel Castro before the revolution even had much support. They fought in a failed 1953 attack on military barracks, crossed the ocean from Mexico on a boat, and fought later in the mountains. Almost everyone from that founding group is now dead.

Valdés's biggest impact was on Cuba's intelligence service—the organization that spies on people and protects the government from threats. In the 1960s, Valdés built an agency called the G2 that became very good at gathering information and staying in power. According to Yahoo News and France24, this was his major achievement. The G2 still exists and still operates today.

The spy system Valdés created worked like this: the government used neighbors to watch neighbors, placed informants in workplaces and schools, and turned surveillance into a normal part of life. This system lasted through decades of change and through three different Cuban leaders. It never went away.

Valdés held important government jobs for many years across very different times in Cuba's history. Most other leaders from the revolution either died young, fell out of favor, or ended up with jobs in name only. Valdés kept real power.

Cuba right now is facing serious problems. There are fuel shortages, power blackouts, and many people are leaving the country. The government is struggling because young people who grew up after the revolution don't feel connected to its history the way their parents did. When the government announced Valdés's death using revolutionary language, it was partly trying to remind Cubans that the original ideals still matter.

For Cubans who left the island and for U.S. leaders, Valdés was a complicated figure. Under his watch, the G2 arrested people who spoke against the government, spied on dissidents, and worked with foreign spy agencies in ways that the U.S. spent fifty years trying to stop. His death removes an important symbolic figure, but the system he built is still there.

How Cuba's current leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, responds to this moment will tell us something important about whether the government plans to hold onto its revolutionary past or begin to move beyond it.