Ramiro Valdés

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Ramiro Valdés Menéndez (born April 28, 1932 in Artemisa , Cuba) is a Cuban politician and military man.

Life

At the age of 21 he took part in the attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba organized by Fidel Castro , for which he was sentenced to prison, which he served with Castro on the Isla de Pinos . In May 1955 he and the other political prisoners were given amnesty by the Batista government. He then emigrated to Mexico , where he was trained for guerrilla warfare together with other revolutionaries and returned to Cuba on December 2, 1956 with the yacht Granma together with 81 fellow soldiers to initiate the military struggle to overthrow Batista, in which he initially under Castro's command and later fought by Che Guevara , when he took part in the expedition from the Sierra Maestra in the east to the province of Las Villas in central Cuba as his deputy. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Valdés was promoted to the highest rank of Comandante .

In 1961, Ramiro Valdés became minister with the formation of the Ministry of the Interior and again in 1979. Valdés was responsible for setting up the General Directorate for Reconnaissance, which developed into one of the leading secret services worldwide.

Valdés also served as First Vice Minister of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Ministry of Defense) and one of the Vice Presidents of the Council of State and Council of Ministers . For the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) he became a member of the Cuban People's Assembly . In addition to numerous other awards, he was named Comandante de la Revolución and Hero of Cuba , among others .

In 2010 Valdés traveled to Caracas as an advisor to the Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez and sparked heated discussions. Officially, he was supposed to head a commission to solve the country's problems with the electricity supply, but this was questioned due to his lack of experience in the field. His long-standing responsibility for domestic intelligence and for the repression of government opponents was rated as significantly more relevant to his stay, especially by the Venezuelan opposition.

Ramiro Valdés is currently part of Raúl Castro's government as one of five Vice-Presidents of the Council of Ministers (below First Vice-President Miguel Díaz-Canel ), as well as a member of the Politburo of the PCC and the State Council of Cuba. During a cabinet reshuffle in January 2011, Valdés relinquished the management of the communications ministry, but since then he has continued to oversee the building, industry and communications ministries as a kind of super minister.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Venecuba”, a single nation, in: The Economist of February 11, 2010, accessed on January 11, 2017 (English)
  2. ↑ Yolanda Valery: Polémica en Venezuela por ministro cubano, in: BBC Mundo of February 4, 2010, accessed on January 11, 2017 (Spanish)
  3. ^ Government reshuffle in Cuba. In: ORF . January 7, 2011, accessed January 7, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Cuba: ahora, superministros. In: Proceso. January 11, 2011, Retrieved December 23, 2012 (Spanish).
personal data
SURNAME Valdés, Ramiro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Valdés Menéndez, Ramiro (full name); Comandante
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician and military; Vice President of the State Council
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Artemisa , Cuba