OPINION:
Recent media reporting on Trump administration officials looking for a Cuban version of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez sent security analysts and political commentators scrambling.
Worst of all, the U.S. was reportedly considering Cuban Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Lazaro Alvarez Casas or Raul Castro’s grandson Raul Rodriguez Castro as a fit for that role.
The Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Cuba (MININT) is the most corrupt and feared institution in the country. It is closely associated with systemic human rights abuses, human and drug trafficking and espionage activities.
More than anything else, MININT serves as the praetorian guard for Cuba’s communist government, protecting the political leadership from internal challenges.
MININT monitors dissidents, suppresses opposition and carries out politically motivated arrests and killings. In 2021, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the ministry and most of its leadership, citing serious human rights abuses.
The ministry oversees the national police, state security apparatus, border guard troops, intelligence, counterintelligence, prisons, fire services, immigration and other internal control functions.
MININT is intrusive and pervasive by design. It monitors everyday life, watching over society, and acts quickly against real or perceived threats to the regime.
More than 1,200 political prisoners, the most in Latin America, are in MININT prisons. A visit from or arrest by the MININT is meant to strike terror in the hearts of the Cuban people.
In addition, the ministry oversees the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, political neighborhood watch organizations charged with reporting all anti-government statements and/or actions.
Also subordinate to MININT is the National Special Brigade, a highly loyal and specialized shock force that is routinely deployed against civilian protesters and political dissidents.
MININT’s intelligence and counterintelligence prowess are universally recognized. Described as a smaller version of the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi, it has core missions of internal surveillance and political control.
Intelligence professionals believe MININT easily rivals the East German Stasi for competence, effectiveness and ruthlessness. Cuban authorities dedicate the totality of their intelligence operations against the United States with astonishing success.
Some of the most spectacular espionage cases uncovered in the U.S. in recent years are connected to MININT. Spies Walter Kendall Myers, Ana Belen Montes and Victor Manuel Rocha are proof of their stunning success.
At one point, MININT counterintelligence essentially shut down all U.S. intelligence operations within Cuba.
Under the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies, over 500,000 Cubans — representing more than 5% of the island’s population — made their way into the U.S. MININT facilitated every aspect of this migration wave by granting travel documents, exit clearances, and passports.
Anything to keep the U.S. off balance is fair game.
Internationally, Cuban intelligence advisers created, trained and are still embedded within Nicaragua’s Ministry of the Interior. In Venezuela, Cuban intelligence operatives remodeled the country’s intelligence services into a domestic security apparatus aimed at the armed forces to quell unrest.
They were deployed throughout Venezuela’s police, intelligence, military, immigration and other strategic institutions. So committed was MININT to the Chavez-Maduro dictatorship that it dispatched Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdes, the founder of Cuba’s MININT, as a consultant to the regime.
Of the 32 Cubans killed during the U.S. military operation to capture Nicolas Maduro, many were believed to be MININT officers.
MININT officers also operate freely in Mexico, Spain and other permissive countries, trying to circumvent U.S. restrictions and obstruct U.S. interests.
The ministry has made a spectacular comeback since the late 1980s, when senior MININT officials, including the minister, were purged to protect the Castros’ involvement in corruption and narco-trafficking.
While the armed forces, through their economic conglomerate GAESA, control up to 70% of the Cuban economy, MININT retains 100% political and internal control.
It is no accident that Raul Castro’s U.S.-sanctioned son Alejandro is a MININT brigadier general and Raul Rodriguez Castro is a MININT colonel.
The idea that Gen. Alvarez and Col. Rodriguez might be in play would be catastrophic for the Cuban people.
In addition to leading major espionage efforts against the United States, Gen. Alvarez has personally been sanctioned by the U.S. for gross human rights abuses. New York court documents have also implicated Col. Rodriguez in human trafficking operations.
These are not the good guys that Washington is looking for. Cuba’s MININT has forfeited any role in the country’s democratic future.
Policy planners would be wise to stay away.
• Emilio T. Gonzalez is a retired U.S. intelligence officer who has served in senior positions in the U.S. Army, on the National Security Council and in the Department of Homeland Security.
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