The Cuban artist Camila Lobón turned the cederista into an illustration monster—though, to be honest, Fidel Castro had already achieved that creative work in 1960—with the release number 32 of her satirical series “Miserable Bestiary”, published in the digital magazine Rialta on Tuesday, October 13, and shared on her social media this Thursday.
The piece, titled “Cederista”, appears to depict an anthropomorphized claw with an inquisitive eye and a machete held by a tongue-arm: an image in a surrealist-gothic style whose design, as explained by Lobón herself, “is based on the original logo of El Cederista,” that emblem created by Cándido Justiz Pileta —the first national head of Vigilance for the organization— with the motto “With the guard held high.”
The artist, who admits to feeling "a dark satisfaction" while drawing this piece, accompanies the illustration with a text that is both a political analysis, a personal memory, and an act of accusation.
"It was barely 1960 when one of the most lethal institutions known to freedom was born in Cuba," writes Lobón, before quoting the founding words of the late dictator: the system was to be "a system of revolutionary collective surveillance" so that everyone would know who lived on the block, "what they were up to; who they associated with; what activities they were involved in."
The result of such a patriotic initiative was captured with surgical precision: "With denunciation institutionalized as a patriotic duty, meanness found the perfect civic disguise. The neighbor became an enemy, and camaraderie turned into a collective syndrome of suspicion."
Lobón, born in Camagüey in 1995, trained at the Higher Institute of Art in Havana and exiled in the United States since October 2021 after years of harassment by State Security, writes from the vivid memory of someone who grew up under that surveillance: "The elders threatened us with the lurking Cederista, as if it were the Boogeyman or the Sack Man, every time we expressed anything resembling a political concern."
The illustration comes just two weeks after the 66th anniversary of the CDR, celebrated on September 28, at a time when even the regime itself admits that the organization is struggling significantly. Díaz-Canel acknowledged before CDR members that "many people believe this is already an outdated organization, that makes no sense in current conditions, that contributes nothing" — which did not stop him from promptly requesting an expansion of its neighborhood surveillance role, because consistency has never been a strength of the regime.
The activist Alina Bárbara López described the CDR, an organization currently led by former Cuban spy Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, as a "gigantic and ineffective bureaucratic structure with no social base" in September; while the regime, true to its style, awarded 134 outstanding CDR members by presidential decree that same month.
In the comments on the post, internet users did not hold back: one pointed out that the CDR "turned a vice into a revolutionary virtue" and that "the revolution is nothing more than a massive work of corruption"; another noted that from there "the true New Man was born: a snitch, meddling in the lives of neighbors, and envious"; a third warned that the beast remains very much alive: "they inform on today’s protesters, and many have ended up imprisoned."
That last observation is backed by statistical data: Cuba recorded 1,372 political prisoners as of October 1, 2026, a historic record according to Prisoners Defenders, in a country that also suffers blackouts lasting between 18 and more than 20 hours daily and a power generation deficit that frequently exceeds 2,000 MW.
Lobón concludes his text with a reflection that transcends the geography of Cuba: "This creature, regrettably, is not endemic to Cuba or to any particular ideology or political system. A conjunction of two disastrous human weaknesses—cowardice and selfishness—we can find it dining next to Christ or denouncing a Jew to the Nazi authorities [...]. It only needs, to manifest itself, for power to present it with the dilemma of pushing others or receiving blows."
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