Raúl Castro sent a letter this Sunday to the members of the Military Counterintelligence (CIM) of the Revolutionary Armed Forces to congratulate them on the 64th anniversary of the founding of this body, as published by the official newspaper Granma. The letter was also broadcast by Cuban Television.
The letter, signed as "General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz," praises the members of the institution using the regime's usual language: "Loyalty, bravery, and modesty are characteristics that define the members of this important body, who confront the challenges imposed by the aggressive policies of our main enemy with professionalism."
The text urges them to be "staunch defenders, at any cost, of the achievements attained by our country" and concludes with the slogan "¡Until victory, always!".
Raúl's epistolary intervention acquires a particular political weight given his practical disappearance from public life. At 95 years old, the last survivor of the generation that took power in 1959 did not attend the IX Congress of the PCC in March 2026 nor was he present at the central event on July 26, where Díaz-Canel read a message signed by him in an absence described as unprecedented in at least three decades.
His interventions have been reduced to letters and messages disseminated by third parties or state television, making each appearance—albeit epistolary—a political event that the regime uses to project continuity.
In 2026, Raúl briefly reappeared alongside Díaz-Canel during the ceremony for the 65th anniversary of the Personal Security Directorate of MININT, following months of rumors about his health. He also led the honor guard for Ramiro Valdés in June and attended the centenary of the dictator Fidel Castro in August, always seated in the front row but without delivering any speech.
The CIM was founded on November 7, 1962, by Raúl Castro himself, who was then the Minister of the FAR, through Order No. 07, just a few weeks after the Missile Crisis. Since its inception, the institution has operated as a political control mechanism within the armed forces, responsible for detecting and neutralizing any dissent or disloyalty among the personnel.
Subordinate to the CIM are the Prevention Troops, known as “red berets,” created in 1981 also by orders of Raúl Castro. The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned them in August 2021 under the Global Magnitsky Act for their involvement in repressing the protests on July 11 of that year.
Human rights organizations document that the CIM operates in coordination with State Security and MININT in surveillance operations, house arrests, and arbitrary detentions against activists, journalists, and opposition members.
In October 2026, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights recorded 387 repressive actions, including 30 arbitrary detentions and 145 surveillance or cordon operations in front of dissidents' homes.
One day before Raúl's letter, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz also congratulated the CIM, praising its "absolute loyalty" to the FAR and the Revolution, in a message accompanied by a video of Fidel Castro discussing the operation of the organization.
Raúl's congratulation to the CIM—an organization he founded and that has been a guardian of political loyalty within the FAR for over six decades—aims to reinforce its diminishing role as a symbolic guarantor of the system in the twilight of the historical generation of Castroism, a decline accelerated by the deaths of figures like Ramiro Valdés.
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