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The host of the state program 'Con Filo', Michel Torres Corona, reacted this Sunday on Facebook to the death of Ramiro Valdés Menéndez with a veiled complaint about Cuban state television, which announced the passing after wishing parents a happy day and connecting with the electrical dispatch.
"One tries not to see in gestures like this a change of era, but the last few days have affected many (myself included) with a stubborn suspicion," wrote Torres Corona, one of the regime's most active spokespersons on social media.
The priorities of the Nacional de Televisión News (NTV) —which prioritized Father's Day greetings and the electricity report over the announcement of the death of one of the last survivors of the historical generation— felt awkward even for someone within the system itself.
The discomfort of Torres Corona is not merely procedural. His publication comes days after the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel announced a package of 176 economic measures that includes private banking, private exchange houses, the transformation of state enterprises into joint-stock companies, and the opening up to foreign investment from Cubans residing abroad.
For orthodox sectors of Cuban communism, these reforms represent a betrayal of the project that Ramiro Valdés and his generation built. Torres Corona suggests it without naming him directly: «Ramiro was at the beginning of it all and is no longer alive to know if, ultimately, that process will reach its end».
Valdés, born in Artemisa on April 28, 1932, was 94 years old. He participated in the assault on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, was imprisoned on what was then called the Isle of Pines, and returned to Cuba as one of the 82 expeditionaries from the yacht Granma.
He was a direct subordinate of Che Guevara, the second-in-command of Column 8 "Ciro Redondo", and fought in the battle of Santa Clara.
After the triumph of 1959, he held the highest positions in security and government: head of State Security, Minister of the Interior, Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, and Deputy Prime Minister.
Since September 2025, Valdés had disappeared from the public scene without any official explanation. In February 2026, it was reported that he was hospitalized in Havana in serious condition, and in March the regime continued to provide no explanations regarding his absence from multiple sessions of the Council of Ministers.
Torres Corona recalled that, in an interview with Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, Valdés confessed that the only thing he regretted in life was not having been able to accompany Che in Bolivia — which, according to Torres Corona himself, was akin to regretting not having been able to die alongside his leader.
The official spokesperson concluded their publication with a call that felt more like an internal warning than a tribute: "Those of us who still breathe must give our last breath in defense of the Homeland, the Revolution, and Socialism... even if that (surely) means challenging powerful forces both within and outside the social and national sphere".
One of the last pillars of the founding generation passes away, while its supposed heirs announce reforms that Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz himself acknowledged will create "contradictions" that the government will have to address on the fly.
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