“El comite”: Spying on the Cuban people since 1960

The Castro regime celebrated another anniversary of the CDR, or the infamous “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution”.

The CDRs were part of the police state in Cuba.  It was a block by block spy network.  It was neighbor “snitching” on other neighbors.

Julio Cesar Alvarez recently posted about the CDRs.  It reminded many of us just how bad it really was:

“The creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in Cuba was a Machiavellian political monstrosity, conceived to reveal and suppress all forms of opposition to the nascent Communist dictatorship.“

We will establish a system of Revolutionary collective surveillance, and everyone will know who lives in the block, what those who live in the block do, what relations they had with the tyranny [of the Batista regime], where they work, who they meet, and what activities they get involved in.”    Those were the words of Fidel Castro, spoken on September 28, 1960. “

It was one of the worst chapters of the regime’s story.

We were lucky because we left.  Many were not so lucky.  They stayed and endured the repression.

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