The Cuban journalist based in Miami Miguel Cossío was the first to publicly identify Ramón Romero Curbelo as the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) of Cuba, following the publication of photographs from the meeting between the CIA director and high-ranking Cuban officials that took place last Thursday in Havana.
The images, released by the CIA itself with the faces of the Cuban officials blurred, showed Romero Curbelo alongside Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, during their meeting with the agency's director, John Ratcliffe.
Cossío explained that the CIA acted deliberately by publishing those photographs shortly after the regime announced the meeting in its official press. "The CIA has been very precise in conveying the message it wanted to send to the Cuban regime and especially to public opinion," the journalist stated.
According to Cossío, the key question is why the agency wanted the world to know about that particular man. "Why this person? Why Ramón Romero Curbelo, brigadier general? This person who is number 10 in our Castroist deck," he noted.
Romero Curbelo, originally from Cienfuegos, was virtually unknown to the public until this moment. Before rising to the head of intelligence, he held positions within the MININT structure in that province with the rank of colonel. His position was officially recorded in August 2025, when he led a Cuban delegation on a visit to the National Academy of Public Security of Vietnam, where he was formally identified as the director of the Intelligence Directorate.
Cossío identifies him as the "10 of Spades" in his project La Baraja Castrista, 2026 edition, an initiative he created in 2021 after the protests of July 11 and the massive repression carried out by the regime, while he was directing América TV, channel 41 in Miami.
"I said it was great that people, through a card game, could get to know the faces of those who hold power in Cuba, the faces of repression," the journalist recalled about the origin of the project.
The idea was inspired by the deck of cards used by the United States in 2003 to identify the key figures of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, so that soldiers and officers would know who’s who. "I took the original idea and adapted it to the Cuban case," Cossío explained.
In the 2026 edition of the deck, the numbers above 10 correspond to the Castro family and the generals of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and other key ministries, placing Romero Curbelo in a position of significant influence within the regime's power structure.
The visit of Ratcliffe to Havana included a direct message from President Trump: the United States is willing to address economic and security issues, but only if Cuba implements “fundamental changes.” A CIA official was even more explicit in warning that “Cuba cannot continue to be a refuge for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere”.
The public exposure of Romero Curbelo marks a turning point: the head of Cuban espionage, who has until now remained in the shadows, has been identified before the international public by the decision of the CIA itself, which Cossío interprets as a calculated message to the regime about the limits of what Washington is willing to tolerate.
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