Miguel Díaz-Canel met this week with dozens of prominent cederistas from across the country to reaffirm the relevance of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution just days before their 66th anniversary, and the outcome was predictable: while the president called for "providing the responses from the CDRs that this time requires," everyday Cubans responded on social media with a terse, "that's been dead for a long time, don't count on me."
The event, reported on the Presidency's website this Friday and featured today on Canal Caribe, served for Díaz-Canel to describe neighborhoods as "the main stage of the Revolution," with the logic that if the neighborhood works well, the municipality, the province, and the country function well. A domino effect that, judging by the Cuban reality, has been falling for years.
The official acknowledged, albeit somewhat reluctantly, the underlying problem: “There are many people thinking that this is already an aging organization, one that makes no sense under current conditions, that contributes nothing.” His response was to insist that “it’s quite the opposite,” although he did not clarify how a neighborhood watch structure founded in 1960 can reinvent itself when people have been emigrating in large numbers for years and the very leaders are aging without succession.
He was accompanied at the meeting by Roberto Morales Ojeda, Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee, and Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, National Coordinator of the CDR, who has been calling for the "revitalization" of the organization for years without anyone seeming to listen too closely. The decline of the CDR is acknowledged by the leadership itself: low participation, aging members, and youth disinterest are the constants that the regime tries to conceal with new acronyms and parallel movements.
This is precisely the purpose of initiatives like "My Neighborhood for the Homeland" and the Community Youth Network, led by the Union of Young Communists. The regime also tasked the cederistas with disseminating the 176 Economic and Social Transformations, the package of capitalist reforms that the Government intends to present as a reinforcement of "socialism." Díaz-Canel asked the cederista leaders to implement them "block by block."
The official speech addressed neighborhood solidarity and the need to reach out to "the elderly person living alone, the retiree who gave everything for the Revolution and now needs our support." The ironic detail is that this support is promised in a country experiencing blackouts of between 18 and more than 20 hours a day, with a power generation deficit exceeding 2,000 MW and a shortage of food and medicines that does not spare neighborhoods or provinces. According to Prisoners Defenders, by the end of August this year, there were 1,339 political prisoners on the island.
Internet users did not let the contradiction slide. "Stop with the stories, times have changed, motivations have changed, expectations have changed," wrote one. Another was more direct: "Scam artists." A third asked, with sarcasm that needs no translation: "Can someone tell me in which country this is happening?"
There were those who pointed out the real elephant in the room and recalled that "GAESA is the only monopoly whose assets were mostly acquired from the national economy without any compensation." Another added with the phrase that sums up the true state of the organization: "That no longer exists, stop the lies, only the pricing works."
The event took place on the eve of the 66th anniversary of the CDR, which will be commemorated next Monday, September 28. The regime honored 134 outstanding cederistas this week through Presidential Decree 1284, signed by Díaz-Canel in early September. The central event for the anniversary is scheduled to take place in Matanzas, a province declared National Vanguard in the organization's emulation for 2026.
This year, the official celebration commemorates the centenary of Fidel Castro's birth, who founded the CDR on September 28, 1960, as a network for neighborhood surveillance and reporting.
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