A Cuban resident in Havana published a video that went viral on social media, recounting how, upon leaving his house one Monday morning, a neighbor confronted him demanding to see his identity card, claiming that her mother was "the block's watchman."
The man, who has been living at that address for about five or six months, described the situation as "surreal" and compared it to scenes taken from dystopian novels. "One Monday morning, straight out of the perfect dystopian book, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, whatever you want to call it, someone asked me to give them my ID so they could keep an eye on me," he said with evident disbelief.
The incident directly relates to the structure of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), created on September 28, 1960, as a neighborhood surveillance network and social control system. Its grassroots organization includes the role of the "surveillance officer" for each block, responsible for community observation and resident registration.
In September 2025, former spy Gerardo Hernández, national coordinator of the CDR, reaffirmed that "there shouldn't be a revolutionary block without CDRs functioning." However, in practice, many neighborhoods no longer conduct CDR watch duties and citizen apathy towards the organization is growing.
The author of the video did not hide his perplexity towards what he considers a mentality stuck in past decades. "It seems so surreal to me that there are people who live in the seventies, in the eighties, who think that any of those structures still serve a purpose," he remarked.
The testimony connects with the concept of "anthropological damage," developed by thinker Dagoberto Valdés and the Centro de Estudios Convivencia (CEC) since 2006 to describe the profound deterioration of cognitive, ethical, and social capacities of individuals caused by decades of totalitarianism. The identified consequences include fear, servility, social simulation, and loss of personal autonomy: precisely the type of behavior illustrated in the episode narrated in the video.
In May 2025, the CEC presented its XVIII Report on Anthropological Damage in Cuba at the University of Florida, featuring contributions from around 60 Cubans from both the island and the diaspora. The document proposes, among other measures, a "Law for Anthropological Restoration and Integral Human Development."
The video also highlights the urban collapse of Havana as a backdrop. The images depict garbage heaps accumulated on the streets, reflecting the sanitation crisis facing the capital. In February 2026, only 44 out of the 106 garbage collection trucks in Havana were operational due to a lack of fuel, while the city generated between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of solid waste daily.
The contrast between that visible collapse and the persistence of neighborhood surveillance structures is precisely what the video’s author fails to process. "While this country sinks into blackouts, into garbage... for someone to ask me pro bono for my ID to keep watch over me," he said.
The man concluded his account with a question that encapsulates the despair of many Cubans facing their reality: "How? How did we come to have a country?"
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