The former director of Military Intelligence of Venezuela, Hugo «el Pollo» Carvajal, asserts in a draft of unpublished memoirs that the dictator Fidel Castro deployed more than 20,000 Cuban agents within the Venezuelan government and society, with the approval of Hugo Chávez, in an operation of infiltration he describes as "unprecedented."
The document, which was accessed by the Spanish media Artículo14, was written during Carvajal's confinement in the Spanish prison of Estremera, where he stayed from September 2021 until his extradition to the United States in July 2023.
The draft is titled What Really Happened in Venezuela: Memoirs 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 transformed into 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 Chávez regime. «What I know, I know from having led the military intelligence of Venezuela for nearly a decade during Chávez's administration», he writes in the text.
Regarding Cuban infiltration, his words are striking: «A contingent of more than 20,000 Cuban agents penetrated 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 was not ordered," Carvajal leaves no doubt about the extent of that influence: "Chávez compromised our sovereignty from the moment he fell in love with the Cubans".
This testimony aligns with what the United Nations Independent International Mission on Venezuela documented in 2022, concluding that Cuban agents "instructed, 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 Venezuelan repression has been documented in multiple international reports.
The memoirs 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 gravely 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 never to have them by my side again," Chávez is said to have told him.
About 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 the office, among them a prize of three million euros that was won by Muammar Gaddafi and which he gifted to Chávez during a visit. It was her only wealth, if it can be called that."
Delcy Rodríguez served as Minister of the Presidency in 2006 and stayed away from power until Maduro reintegrated her in 2013 as Minister of Communication.
A long chain of accusations against Havana
The revelations contained in the memoirs are not the first in which Carvajal attributes Cuba a direct role in clandestine operations orchestrated through the Chavista apparatus.
Already in 2021, while detained in Spain, the former head of Intelligence submitted a report to the National Court in which he claimed that the Cuban regime had been involved in mechanisms to finance the Spanish party Podemos.
Among other things, he described alleged money transfers from Havana via the Cuban Embassy in Caracas and the use of the Venezuelan diplomatic pouch. Carvajal then claimed he could provide witnesses to corroborate some of those operations.
His accusations took on a much greater dimension in December 2025, when from a U.S. federal prison he sent a letter to President Donald Trump in which he pointed directly to Cuba as a central piece of the structure created during Chávez's administration.
Carvajal stated that Havana allegedly proposed using drug trafficking as a tool against the United States and attributed to Cuban agents involvement in intelligence operations, support for armed organizations, and infiltration of U.S. 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 between Cuba and drug trafficking and 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 fighting against drug trafficking.
For his part, Foreign Minister 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 between Washington, Caracas, and Havana.
The memories now known 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 constructed.
However, her statements must be distinguished between those supported by other investigations—such as the presence of Cuban agents in Venezuelan intelligence agencies documented by the UN mission—and other broader accusations that are fundamentally based on her testimony.
Currently, Carvajal is in preventive detention in New York after pleading guilty to four federal charges related to narco-terrorism.
Still without a sentence, he is cooperating with the U.S. prosecution, and according to sources from Artículo14, he has reportedly provided crucial information even for the capture of Maduro in early January. His sentence was postponed in April 2026 after offering 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 be brought to justice."
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