The former director of Military Intelligence of Venezuela, Hugo "el Pollo" Carvajal, claims in a draft of unpublished memoirs that the dictator Fidel Castro deployed over 20,000 Cuban agents within the Venezuelan government and society, with the approval of Hugo Chávez, in an infiltration operation he describes as "unprecedented."
The document, which was accessed by the Spanish outlet Artículo14, was written during Carvajal's confinement in the Spanish prison of Estremera, where he remained from September 2021 until his extradition to the United States in July 2023.
The draft is titled What Really Happened in Venezuela: Memories of Hugo Carvajal and includes subtitles such as "The Story of How Fidel Castro Took Control of Venezuela" and "The Story Behind Chavismo and How It Became a Criminal Organization."
Carvajal led the Venezuelan Military Intelligence Directorate from 2004 to 2011 under Chávez, and again from 2013 to 2014 under Nicolás Maduro, which gives him a privileged position to describe the internal mechanisms of the Chavista regime. “What I know, I know from having led Venezuela's military intelligence for nearly a decade during Chávez's government,” he writes in the text.
About the Cuban infiltration, his words are striking: «A contingent of over 20,000 Cuban agents infiltrated the Venezuelan government and society». According to Carvajal, «Castro, with Chávez's approval, infiltrated Venezuela in an unprecedented manner» and «imposed advisors in all ministries and fostered bureaucracy with the intention of increasingly controlling the Venezuelan population».
Although he clarifies that Chávez "sought advice from Havana, but they did not order him," Carvajal leaves no doubt about the extent of that influence: "Chávez compromised our sovereignty since he fell in love with the Cubans."
This testimony aligns with what the UN Independent International Mission on Venezuela documented in 2022, concluding that Cuban agents "trained, advised, and participated" in intelligence and counterintelligence activities within the DGCIM and SEBIN, describing a "parallel intelligence structure" based on a confidential memorandum from 2008.
That Cuban footprint in the Venezuelan repression has been documented in multiple international reports.
The memories also contain revelations about Delcy Rodríguez, the current acting president of Venezuela following Maduro's capture by U.S. forces on January 3, 2026.
Carvajal recounts that in 2012, during his last personal conversation with a seriously ill Chávez, the then Venezuelan president wanted to rid himself of a group that included Tareck El Aissami, Jorge Rodríguez, and his sister Delcy. "Don’t worry, if I get through this, I hope to never have them by my side again," Chávez reportedly said.
Regarding Delcy in particular, Carvajal is explicit: "She was without a position since she took valuable items from the president's safe when she was the minister of his office, among them a prize of three million euros that Muammar Gaddafi had won and gifted to Chávez during a visit. It was her only fortune, if one can call it that."
Delcy Rodríguez served as the Minister of the Office of the Presidency in 2006 and remained out of power until Maduro reinstated her as Minister of Communication in 2013.
A long chain of accusations against Havana
The revelations contained in the memoirs are not the first in which Carvajal assigns Cuba a direct role in clandestine operations orchestrated through the Chavista apparatus.
In 2021, while detained in Spain, the former head of Intelligence submitted a report to the National Court claiming that the Cuban regime had engaged in mechanisms to finance the Spanish party Podemos.
Among other things, he described alleged money deliveries from Havana through the Cuban Embassy in Caracas and the use of the Venezuelan diplomatic pouch. Carvajal claimed that he could provide witnesses to corroborate some of these operations.
His accusations took on a much larger dimension in December 2025, when from a U.S. federal prison he sent a letter to President Donald Trump in which he directly pointed to Cuba as a central piece of the structure created during Chavez's administration.
Carvajal stated that Havana allegedly suggested using drug trafficking as a tool against the United States and attributed the involvement of Cuban agents in intelligence operations, support for armed organizations, and infiltration of American institutions.
The reaction from Havana was immediate. Senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and the Ministry of Justice appeared publicly to deny any connection of Cuba to drug trafficking and to assert the drug cooperation with the United States.
Days later, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Josefina Vidal described the accusations as "absurd and false" and defended what she characterized as Cuba's history of combating drug trafficking.
For his part, Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla also intervened in the controversy to defend Cuba's actions against drug trafficking, at a time when Carvajal's statements coincided with a significant escalation of tensions among Washington, Caracas, and Havana.
The now-known memoirs expand this narrative to the early years of Chavismo and provide Carvajal's account of how Cuban influence within the Venezuelan state may have been established.
However, her claims must be distinguished between those supported by other research—such as the documented presence of Cuban agents in Venezuelan intelligence agencies noted by the UN mission—and other broader accusations that remain fundamentally based on her testimony.
Currently, Carvajal is in preventive detention in New York after pleading guilty to four federal charges related to narcoterrorism.
Still without a sentence, he is cooperating with the U.S. Prosecutor's Office, and according to sources from Artículo14, he has provided crucial information even for the capture of Maduro in early January. His sentence was postponed in April 2026 after providing additional information about leaders of Chavismo to the authorities.
In his memoirs, Carvajal also warned about Maduro—before his arrest— that "serious human rights violations do not expire and that sooner or later they will lead to trial."
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