On June 6, 1961, by order of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) was created, headed by Commander Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, with which the young Revolution entered a decisive stage of improvement of security and internal order.

This arrangement began with the founding of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), on January 5, 1959, and the integration of the counterintelligence and intelligence services of the Rebel Army into the State Security Organs, on March 26, that same year.

Since then, the Ministry, together with the Revolutionary Armed Forces, formed the powerful shield against which the aggressions of the Yankee empire crashed. It was thus that the Cuban political and social project complied with the Leninist maxim that a revolution was worth as much as it was capable of defending itself, a principle very present in Fidel’s strategy, interpreted by Commander Camilo Cienfuegos, who a few hours after assuming command in the capital, together with Ernesto Che Guevara, signed a decree that dissolved the repressive organs of the Batista dictatorship.

Those decisions would be reflected in national life beyond official spheres, and for the first time in history the people would watch with joy how the ancient castle that was the headquarters of the hated Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities was demolished to its foundations by a crane, which represented the last of the criminal organizations created in the 1950s by Fulgencio Batista, following the instructions of the CIA and the FBI.

Washington did not sit idly by, as evidenced in his memoirs by the then President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who acknowledged: “In a matter of weeks, after Castro entered Havana, we, in the government, began to examine the measures that could be effective to repress Castro”.

These actions took their greatest expression in a first comprehensive plan of aggressions against the country, signed by said president on March 26, 1960, which included in first order plans and attempts to assassinate Commander in Chief Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, and other senior leaders, the preparation and implementation of the mercenary invasion of Playa Girón, espionage operations, terrorism, uprisings and subversion campaigns of all kinds, with which, together with the economic, commercial and financial blockade and the claims of diplomatic isolation, they hoped to put an end to the Cuban Revolution.

In this difficult context, weeks after the defeat of the mercenary invasion at Playa Girón, the Minint was created and just beginning its functions, the then President John F. Kennedy developed a new plan with his main military commanders to take revenge for the defeat, called Operation Mongoose, which surpassed all previous ones in magnitude and which finally provided for an invasion of Cuba by the US armed forces.

Thus, since then and during more than 10 administrations of the White House, more than 600 plans and actions of attacks against Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, uprisings in rural areas, espionage operations, were carried out by the CIA, the Pentagon and official agencies bacteriological warfare, terrorism and subversive programs, among others.

One after another they failed in the face of the radicalization of the revolutionary process and the leadership of the maximum leader at the head of his people in victorious battles against the empire and its lackeys, in epics in which the Minint and many of its combatants came to occupy a seat of honored for their performance, such as Captain Eliseo Reyes, San Luis, who at just 25 years old became a legendary leader in Pinar del Río, where he faced armed infiltrations on the coasts of the province and fought his last combat in the guerrilla of the Che Guevara, in Bolivia.

Commander Tony Santiago is also an example of an anonymous hero, as a State Security agent he infiltrated a counterrevolutionary organization in 1964, and while he was heading to Miami by sea to carry out a mission, the small boat was intercepted and sunk by a Terrorist-armed boat. About to be machine-gunned, he returned fire with his pistol and died shouting: Homeland or Death! as his assassins commented years later.

Our Five Heroes are also a sign of intransigence and fidelity to the Revolution, who in the ranks of the Miami terrorists risked their lives in defense of the country’s security and who resisted in US prisons and did not give up until one day they returned to the country.

Also in these 62 years, the Ministry has developed other fundamental directions to guarantee interior and road order, the protection of forests, the prevention and extinction of fires, border guard troops, customs services, immigration and foreigners and other decisive missions.

Recently, the Cuban people had moving proofs of the courage and dedication of our firefighters, who did not back down from the fire fulfilling their duty during the incident at the super tanker base in Matanzas, where 14 died, a few months after having starred in heroic days when the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel in Havana occurred.

The current generations of combatants of the Ministry of the Interior face the strategy based on the new Information and Communication Technologies, on social networks that try to exploit for their purposes the consequences of the economic, commercial and financial blockade, the difficulties in supplies, in the living conditions of the people and the mistakes themselves, all within the crisis related to COVID-19, successfully faced by our scientists and the health system.

Today, like yesterday, the courageous, professional, disciplined, and equanimous attitude of the MININT forces together with the people defeat those enemy plans that unsuccessfully seek to destroy the Revolution.