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The communist leader Yosveny Verdeal Castellanos has been promoted to the position of National Vice Coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) during the VI Plenary of the organization, held last Tuesday via videoconference.
According to the Cuban News Agency, the appointment was proposed by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and approved by the National Executive Secretariat of the CDR.
The meeting was chaired by Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, National Coordinator of the CDR, and Marydé Fernández López, head of the Office for Youth Communist Union and mass organizations, both members of the Central Committee of the PCC.
Verdeal Castellanos is originally from Jovellanos, Matanzas, where he held various leadership positions before joining the central apparatus of the PCC, where he served as an official with extensive experience in party work.
In the same session, the departure of Julia Ileana Durruthy Molina from her position as National Vice-Coordinator was approved, in what the regime referred to as a "natural process of renewal".
Durruthy Molina dedicated 33 years to work in the CDR, twelve of which were as a member of the National Secretariat. The participants in the plenary recognized her work in the various stages of the organization and highlighted her contribution to the consolidation of the CDR.
Hernández Nordelo, who has led the CDR since September 2020, is known by the regime as one of the so-called "Five Heroes".
He was the leader of the Red Avispa, a Cuban espionage network in the United States, and was sentenced in 2001 to two life sentences for conspiracy to commit espionage and for his involvement in the shooting down of planes from Hermanos al Rescate on February 24, 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four Cuban-American pilots.
He was released on December 17, 2014 as part of the thawing agreement between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, and since then he has climbed the ranks within the regime's nomenclature: he assumed the role of vice-coordinator of the CDR in April 2020, became national coordinator in September of that year, and was
After the appointment of Verdeal was announced, Hernández posted on his Facebook profile an institutional card featuring the image of the new vice-coordinator and the message: "Congratulations and many successes! #Cuba #CDRCuba #CubaNoSeRinde".
The CDRs, created in 1960 by Fidel Castro, are the largest mass organization in Cuba and have historically served as a mechanism for neighborhood surveillance and social control in the country's communities.
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