The journalist and political analyst Miguel Cossío, based in Miami, revealed in detail the real 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 release 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 in a military-family-repressive structure organized into four core units 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 emphasizes that Rodríguez Castro is not a negotiator: "He has emerged as a sort 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, 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 lives 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 Legrazo Dolongo, who was promoted to first deputy minister in December 2025, general of the Army Corps, a member of the Politburo, and also sanctioned by Washington.
The fourth leg, Cossío explains, refers to the security forces 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 a background in the Armed Forces and connections to the Casas Regueiro family.
Ramón Romero Curbelo, a brigadier general, fits into that fourth pillar as the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the MININT, the regime's espionage apparatus.
"This man had never appeared, nor his name, in the official Cuban press or anywhere else, nor his face or his image. We were the first to unveil 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, indicating that his rise to head the Intelligence Directorate occurred in the subsequent years.
Cossío emphasizes that the mission of the Cuban intelligence apparatus has nothing to do with defending citizens: "The intelligence system of Cuba, through espionage, has been about stealing information, gathering information, but not for the sake of defending the national interests of the citizens of Cuba, but rather to maintain the regime."
As an example of that 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 at 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 2026 Castrista Deck, a tool created by Cossío in 2021 to identify figures of the regime, inspired by the deck of cards that the United States used in 2003 to identify the leaders of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Filed under: