Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), publicly congratulated Brigadier General Óscar Alejandro Callejas Valcarce on his birthday, a senior official of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) sanctioned by the United States for his role as head of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) during the protests on July 11, 2021.
A lifetime dedicated to the Revolution, from the glorious ranks of @minint_cuba. Happy Birthday to General Callejas, Head of the Political Direction of the Ministry of the Interior!, Hernández wrote on X.
The congratulation once again highlights Callejas Valcarce, who has held positions of responsibility within the Cuban police structures for years and currently leads the Political Directorate of MININT.
The United States personally sanctioned the Cuban general on July 30, 2021, just weeks after the historic anti-government protests of July 11.
The Department of the Treasury then included the PNR and two of its top officials in its sanctions list: Callejas Valcarce, who served as the director of the Police, and Eddy Manuel Sierra Arias, deputy director of that institution.
Washington justified the measure due to the actions of law enforcement during the protests and the subsequent detentions of demonstrators. U.S. authorities attributed to the PNR involvement in violent actions against citizens who took to the streets and in the arrests of opposition members and demonstrators.
The sanctions involved the blocking of Callejas' assets and interests in property under U.S. jurisdiction, as well as restrictions on transactions with individuals and entities from the United States.
In May 2026, amidst a new expansion of Washington's measures against structures of the Cuban government, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated the designations related to MININT and PNR under the sanctions program against Cuba.
Hernández Nordelo's congratulation comes, moreover, after the CDR themselves were added by the United States to the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN).
On June 4, 2026, the OFAC sanctioned the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, an organization led by Hernández since 2020, which is one of the main territorial structures established by the Cuban regime and that the failed spy intends to revitalize.
The measure affects the organization and does not, by itself, mean that Hernández Nordelo is individually sanctioned by the OFAC.
The CDR were created by dictator Fidel Castro in September 1960 and spread throughout neighborhoods across the country. Although they officially carry out community activities, they have historically served functions of political surveillance and mobilization in support of the government.
Hernández Nordelo himself has publicly defended on multiple occasions the strengthening of the so-called "revolutionary vigilance" in the neighborhoods.
Before taking over the leadership of the CDR, Hernández was one of the most well-known members of the Avispa Network, a Cuban intelligence structure dismantled by U.S. authorities in the 1990s.
He was sentenced in the United States in 2001 to two life sentences plus 15 years in prison for the crimes for which he was found guilty. He returned to Cuba in December 2014 after being released in the context of the rapprochement between the governments of Barack Obama and Raúl Castro.
This Sunday’s congratulation thus connects two figures who have been linked for decades to the security and political control structures of the totalitarian Cuban state: Hernández Nordelo, leading CDRs sanctioned by Washington since June, and Callejas Valcarce, the current political chief of MININT, who has been individually sanctioned by the United States since 2021.
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