HAVANA — Ramiro Valdes, a veteran of Cuba’s 1959 revolution and a longstanding figure in the island’s leadership, has died at 94, President Miguel Diaz‑Canel announced on social media. No cause of death was provided.
Valdes was among Fidel Castro’s earliest collaborators, fighting in the 1953 Moncada assault and sailing to Cuba on the yacht Granma in 1956 to resume the insurgency. He survived the guerrilla struggle, one of only 12 of the original 82 Granma expeditionaries to do so and served alongside iconic revolutionaries including Fidel and Raul Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Over six decades in government, Valdes held senior roles including interior minister, vice minister of defence, minister of information and communications, and deputy prime minister, where he focused in later years on Cuba’s chronic energy shortages. He was long a member of the Communist Party’s Political Bureau until 2019 and carried the honorifics “Hero of the Republic” and “Commander of the Revolution.”
Known for his loyalty to the revolution and his combative green fatigues and goatee, Valdes remained a prominent public presence well into old age. He frequently appeared in military dress alongside current leaders urging citizens to conserve electricity during repeated power crises. In 2014 he spoke of preserving national unity as essential to the revolution’s survival.
Diaz‑Canel paid tribute on X, saying Valdes’s death “hurts deeply, like that of a father,” and invoking the revolution’s enduring slogan: “Until victory, always, Commander!”