Valdés' Spy Network Outlives Him, Shaping Cuban Control for 67 Years

Ramiro Valdés, architect of Cuba's G2 intelligence service, died at 94 on June 21. The apparatus he built in the 1960s—neighborhood surveillance, workplace informants, embedded counterintelligence—survived every ideological shift and regime change since. The G2 remains operationally active under Miguel Díaz-Canel, making Valdés's institutional legacy far more durable than his own tenure. His death marks the end of the founding generation, but the surveillance infrastructure endures.