The artist recognized the State Security agent in images of the coverage of the funeral honors for the Cuban soldiers who died in Venezuela in the service of Maduro and pointed him out as responsible for his arrest, interrogations and exile in 2021.
MADRID, Spain.- The Cuban visual artist Hamlet Lavastida announced this Friday, January 16, 2026, the identification of another of the State Security officers who directly participated in his detention, interrogations and subsequent exile in 2021. This is the third public identification he has made of one of his repressors.
In one Facebook postaccompanied by screenshots taken from the Canal Caribe broadcast during the official ceremony for the repatriation of the remains of 32 Cubans who died in Venezuela in the service of Nicolás Maduro, Lavastida pointed out an agent whom he identified as “Darío”, a member of the Instruction Bodies of the Department of State Security of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT).
“Here I present to you the face of the henchman named ‘Dario,’” the artist wrote. He explained that he recognized the officer in images released from the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), where the funeral services took place, and that the public exhibition of his face allowed, for the first time, to obtain an updated photographic record.
Lavastida denounced that this officer, with the rank of captain in 2021, was in charge of his arrest on June 26 of that year, as well as the subsequent interrogations in Villa Marista, the transfers to different facilities – including an operational house in Guanabo – and his driving to the Polish Embassy before being forced to leave the country with his then partner, the writer. Katherine Bisquet.
The artist also denounced that the same agent has visited his mother on several occasions to warn her about possible consequences if he returns to Cuba, and held him responsible for actions of harassment, threats and intimidation against numerous activists, artists and independent journalists, including Carolina Barrero, Camila Lobón, Tania Bruguera, Alfredo Martínez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
This new revelation joins two other previous identifications made by Lavastida. In March 2025the creator recognized the State Security officer known as “Colonel Samuel” after seeing him in a National Television News report, after more than three years trying to identify his face. On that occasion he declared that he was directly responsible for his repression during the 92 days that he was detained in Villa Marista and that during the interrogations he tried to force him to collaborate as an undercover agent of the Ministry of the Interior, in addition to asking him to convince the activists Carolina Barrero and Camila Lobón to leave Cuba at the end of September 2021.
Previously, in 2021, Lavastida had identified Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Miguel Estrada Portales as another of his main repressors during his confinement in Villa Marista. Estrada Portales has been linked to high-profile investigations, including those related to the so-called “acoustic attacks” or “Havana syndrome,” as well as to proceedings against opponents and independent journalists.
Hamlet Lavastida was arrested in June 2021 after returning to Cuba from an artistic residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien gallery in Berlin. He remained imprisoned on charges of “incitement to commit a crime” and in September of that year he was released under the condition of leaving the country, in what human rights organizations have denounced as forced exile.
