was recognized for his merits and was personally chosen by Fidel Castro to be the officer tasked with integrating the recently created Eastern Front II "Frank País", under the command of Fidel's younger brother, Raúl. During that time, he held several meetings with members of the Batistas' Cuban Army. Subsequently, he was appointed Chief of Personnel and Inspection, a position that included responsibilities for the Intelligence Service and the recently created Policía Rebelde, which was a predecessor of Castro's Revolutionary Police. During the battle for Santiago de Cuba, he was promoted to Commander of the Cuban Revolution. After the triumph of the Revolution, he was appointed "Chief of the Military Plaza" in Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the country. It is at this time that his face is caught by photographic cameras for the first time, showing his red beard and revealing the reason of the nickname given to him by the rebel troops. He was then transferred to Havana, where he served various functions in the creation of the intelligence agencies and security of the new Castro regime. During the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Piñeiro was deputy to Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, head of G-2 (Seguridad del Estado, or state security). On June 6, 1961, he was appointed Deputy Minister of the Interior and head of the so-called Technical Viceministerio, the body that would be later responsible for gathering intelligence and developing strategies to expand communism in Latin America. In 1965, he was appointed to the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, a post he held until 1997. That same year in Havana, he received the visit of Markus Wolf, director of the East German secret police (the Stasi). Wolf, whose real identity would only be known to the Western intelligence services in 1979, had gone to Cuba to advise the socialist government how to set up the new General Intelligence Directorate on the island. In early 1975, Piñeiro was head of the "Américas Department" of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee. In 1997, he resigned all his active government positions and started to write and edit books dedicated to a retrospective analysis of the Cuban Revolution. Notes References Szulc, Tad. 1986. Fidel - A Critical Portrait. Hutchinson. Koura, Jan; Waters, Robert Anthony (2019-12-01). "'Africanos' versus 'Africanitos' the Soviet-Czechoslovak Competition to Protect the Cuban Revolution". The International History Review. 0 (0): 1–18. doi:10.1080/07075332.2019.1692892. ISSN . 1934