The journalist and political analyst Miguel Cossío, based in Miami, detailed the true structure of power in Cuba after publicly identifying Ramón Romero Curbelo as the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Interior (MININT), following the CIA's publication of photos from his meeting with high-ranking Cuban officials in Havana on May 14 and 15.
According to Cossío, power in Cuba does not reside with civilians but rather in a military-family-repressive structure articulated in four cores under Raúl Castro, whom he describes as "a sort of North Korean-style monarchy."
The first core is the family: Alejandro Castro Espín, Mariela Castro, and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl's favorite grandson and head of his security detail, known as "El Cangrejo."
Cossío is emphatic that Rodríguez Castro is not a negotiator: "He has emerged as a kind of negotiator, but he is not. He is simply an emissary, an emissary due to the trust Raúl Castro has in him and the distrust Raúl Castro has towards other actors."
This family nucleus is intertwined with the military elite through figures such as Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, a brigadier general and president of GAESA, who was sanctioned by the United States on May 8.
Cossío describes her as the person who "controls the suitcase, the money of the Castro family," and notes that one of her sisters resides in Florida as the general manager of two real estate companies, having arrived in the United States in 2023.
The third core consists of those who maintain power through repression: the generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, including Roberto Legrá Sotolongo, who was promoted to first vice minister in December 2025, an army corps general, a member of the Political Bureau, and also sanctioned by Washington.
The fourth pillar, Cossío explains, refers to the security bodies that emerged after the Ochoa Case, when the Armed Forces took control of the MININT: "Generals and officers from the Armed Forces came to hold high positions in the Ministry of the Interior."
Within that structure, Cossío identifies Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas as "the third most powerful man in Cuba": Army Corps General, member of the Political Bureau, deputy to the National Assembly, and Minister of the Interior, with origins in the Armed Forces and connections to the Casas Regueiro family.
Ramón Romero Curbelo, a brigadier general, fits into that fourth leg as head of the Intelligence Directorate of MININT, the regime's espionage apparatus.
"This man had never appeared, neither his name nor his face, in the official Cuban press or anywhere else. We were the first to reveal who he is, his name, his rank, what he did," Cossío stated.
Romero Curbelo replaced Alcibiades Muñoz Gutiérrez, who led Cuban intelligence from 2013 until approximately 2017-2018. In 2015, Romero Curbelo still held the rank of colonel, which places his rise to the head of the Intelligence Directorate in the following years.
Cossío emphasizes that the mission of the Cuban intelligence apparatus has nothing to do with defending its citizens: "The intelligence system in Cuba, through espionage, has been about stealing information, collecting information, but not for the purpose of defending the national interests of the citizens of Cuba, but rather to maintain the regime."
As an example of this work, he mentions a long list of Cuban spies in the United States: Ana Belén Montes, Víctor Manuel Rocha, the Wasp Network, and Kendall Myers, who worked for Cuba for over 30 years in the State Department and passed away in March 2026 after being arrested by the FBI in 2009 along with his wife while they attempted to flee to Cuba on a sailboat.
Romero Curbelo appears as number 10 —"10 of Spades"— in the Castro Deck edition 2026, a tool created by Cossío in 2021 to identify figures of the regime, inspired by the playing cards used by the United States in 2003 to highlight the leaders of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
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