The Cuban writer and doctor César Reynel Aguilera did not rule out this Sunday, hours after the news of Ramiro Valdés Menéndez's death was announced, that the passing of the Cuban leader, popularly known as "pool of blood," might be linked to the failure of the operation on January 3, 2026, in Venezuela, during which the U.S. Delta Force captured Nicolás Maduro and dismantled the Cuban security apparatus that protected him.
Aguilera stated in an interview with Tania Costa, where she also defended the modified 1940 Constitution and its implementation when the transition to Cuba occurs.
"Since the success of the operation on January 3 with the Delta Force, which resulted in the elimination of 32 Cuban agents, it was already known that Ramiro Valdés had to be eliminated."
The writer described Castroism as an organization where serious mistakes have lethal consequences. "In Castroism, when you make a blunder as grave as that, like in any gangster organization, you pay with your life." In Valdés's case, he noted, the mechanism could be as discreet as "changing his doctor."
Aguilera explained his reasoning: "As soon as I saw that operation fail from the Castro perspective, that they killed the entire security apparatus, elite troops, and extremely tough, highly trained individuals... I said Ramiro Valdés is finished."
During that operation, 32 Cuban soldiers died who were part of Maduro's security detail, a fact that the Cuban MININT itself confirmed on January 5 and 6, 2026.
However, Aguilera also did not rule out other explanations. "He was 94 years old; he could have died of natural causes as well; that is one of the hypotheses to consider. Or a combination of the shock of having been defeated and the narrowing of the coronary or cerebral blood vessels."
The second thesis developed by Aguilera is that Valdés was not simply a man loyal to Fidel Castro, but an undercover agent of the intelligence apparatus of the old Communist Party with Soviet ties predating 1959.
"Finally, I have been able to find indicative information that Ramiro Valdés was indeed a member of the intelligence apparatus of the old Communist Party and therefore had links to Soviet intelligence from the beginning, even before Fidel Castro's triumph."
As evidence, he pointed out Valdés's connections with Víctor Trapote, a Spanish sculptor and communist exiled in Mexico identified as a lieutenant colonel in the GRU —the Soviet military intelligence— whose studio served as a coordination point for support to the Castro supporters. According to Aguilera, "the two men who were most closely associated with Víctor Trapote in Mexico were Universo Sánchez... and Ramiro Valdés, to the extent that Ramiro Valdés ended up marrying Irina Trapote, the daughter of Víctor Trapote."
In 1959, when Valdés took on the nominal leadership of the Castrist G-2, the real operational leaders were Osvaldo Sánchez and Víctor Pina Cardoso, who were trained in intelligence. According to Aguilera, Valdés was the front figure that the regime's propaganda presented.
Regarding the well-known poor relationship between Valdés and Raúl Castro, Aguilera provided an interpretation that does not contradict but rather reframes it: both would have been operatives of Moscow within the Castro regime, but functioning in parallel.
"Raúl Castro is the visible face of the Soviet man in Cuba. Everyone in Cuba knew that Moscow's interests always went through Raúl Castro's office," he stated, adding that "no intelligence agency or country puts all its eggs in one basket."
Aguilera concluded that "the death of Ramiro Valdés today can also be seen as the loss of a man of the Soviets first and then of the Russians within Castro," a reading that reframes the leader’s passing not only as the end of a historical figure of Castroism but also as the disappearance of a link in the network of Russian influence on the Island.
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