The artist Hamlet Lavastida and the independent journalist Laura Vargas recognized henchmen responsible for their arrest, interrogations and exile.
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 report on the National Television News. Previously, in 2021, Lavastida had identified Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Miguel Estrada Portales as another of his main repressors during his confinement in Villa Marista.
In the same images from state television, and along with officer “Darío”, two other henchmen of the regime were identified. These are “Juan Carlos” and “Guillermo.” Their faces were recognized by the feminist activist Laura Vargas, also forced into exile by the Cuban regime, after being harassed by these repressors.
«For 3 years I was harassed and persecuted by State Security. A little over a year ago, a criminal case was opened against me for mercenarism. I was interrogated that day for 9 hours in Villa Marista. A month later at the Havana Film Festival, at the Yara cinema at the premiere of One Hundred Years of Solitudethere was Mr. “Juan Carlos”, lettuce like a fresh one, with his children. I stood stiff, I couldn’t react. I later regretted not having taken a photo of it. It’s hard to process that these people have families. But God’s timing is perfect and here it is. And not only him, there is also “Guillermo”, who took care of me during the last months of my stay in Cuba, before “Manuel” disappeared,” Vargas wrote in the publication, where he shares an image of both repressors, parading alongside “Darío.”
