The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution up close
Morning Star | Friday, 13 January 2023 | Click here for original article
SCHOOLS, universities, trade unions: these all exist in both Cuba and Britain, and that is why it is useful to study the Cuban versions.
But a highlight of our visit was seeing something that has never existed in Britain: Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs)
A CDR is a local group, based in a small residential area, that carries out activities in support of and collaboration with the Cuban state and Cuban revolution. There is a national network of CDRs, which was created in 1960.
They were created to defend the young revolution from overthrow by the CIA and Cuban exiles — and this was far from paranoia: bombs exploded in Havana’s presidential palace in September 1960; in April 1961 saw the Bay of Pigs invasion, and when that failed 400 CIA operatives were assigned to Operation Mongoose, with the stated aim of “instituting a new government with which the US can live at peace.”
At least 638 attempts were made to assassinate Fidel Castro, and deadly terrorist attacks were launched by US-based exiles until the 1990s.
Even when young students tried to improve literacy throughout the countryside in 1961, over 40 were killed. The CDRs are part of the successful struggle against this encirclement.
CDRs have since become part of international socialist history: the idea was admired by Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Thomas Sankara, and when he was president of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987 he set up CDRs across his own country (along with borrowing other “Fidelisms,” such as a cry of “la patrie ou la mort” at the end of speeches).
Block party politics
We attended an evening event held by CDR 4 of zone 170 in Pinar del Rio, a city in the west of Cuba.
The event was of a type that would be unfamiliar in Britain: a mixture of outdoor bloc party, political meeting, concert and carnival.
The event took place between two small housing blocks, both four storeys high, on an open space about the width of a tennis court.
In this open space around 100 people had congregated, from very old to very young. At least a third of those there were children.
A lot of people stood about in obvious family groups: two or three generations stood together, some with pet dogs.
A grandmother, a very smiley young mother and a baby stood near me until the mother took the baby into the flats at about 9pm.
When we arrived around 7pm, over 20 children had lined up, and each child greeted one of the arriving British delegates with a handshake and bouquet.
Once we were all assembled around the centre of the open space, the first speaker took to the microphone and explained more about the CDRs’ function.
The CDRs’ first assignment in 1960 was surveillance against attacks on the revolution. But their purpose is now much broader, and they carry out “social work,” support the public health ministry in its response to Covid and help with “beautifying the local area.” They also are involved in blood donation.
A projector and screen had been set up, along with some large speakers and a microphone.
Songs and dances were performed to the assembled crowd. A video was played on the projector.
Then the crowd splintered up as people ate, drank and chatted in smaller groups. Brief speeches were delivered.
At the back stood four older men together, and at one point a Cuban speaker said told us one of them was a deputy of the Cuban legislature.
If anyone lived in the blocks and chose not to get involved, they couldn’t have ignored us: it was too loud. But why would they? It was on their doorstep, it was a warm Caribbean evening, and lots of the neighbours are there.
A CDR is the presence of the Cuban revolution within neighbourhoods.
Just as the trade union can function as the presence of the revolution within workplaces; the Federation of Cuban Women can be seen as the presence of the party within the gender struggle, and the party can be the presence of the revolution in other contexts.
The CDR is a deeply political organisation in a way that is underused in Britain — in the sense that it is involved in real-world organising and providing practical services to the local people.
In Britain, if services are provided to people, it is done in a way that claims to be “apolitical” and strictly divorced from political education.
The CDRs, in contrast, are explicitly political in the way the Black Panther Party’s breakfast programme was a political act because it was a practical act of solidarity as well as the wellspring of profound revolutionary theory.
As a demonstration of this, the walls of the housing blocks which faced onto this open space had been festooned with a variety of flags: the Cuban national flag, the flag of the 26th July Movement that led the guerilla war and 1959 revolution and a red flag you see often around Cuba: the flag of the literacy campaign of 1960. There was also a large picture of Castro.
I’m not sure how permanent these were: perhaps they hang there all the time; perhaps they had been hung moments before we arrive.
For context: this is not a surprising thing to see in Cuba: it is a manifestation of the deep love shown all over Cuba for national heroes and the revolutionaries — schools are filled with portraits of past Cuban leaders (Marti, Castro, Guevara) and celebrate significant dates of Cuban history; children draw portraits of leaders in chalk on the playground.
When I asked if there were Communist Party members at the event, the answer was “of course” — in number, there seemed to be less than five overall, out of at least 100 people present.
But those who were party members, such as Sergio Abreu Hernandez, were the most engaged in organising and leading the event.
As everywhere, a minority choose to become active in politics, but they have a disproportionate impact and their actions affect many non-members.
I mingled and spoke to ordinary Cubans, mostly non-party members.
Some said they were not party members but supported the party. All of them agreed about the unfairness of the US blockade of Cuba.
I asked a few about world politics, and every time I asked if people had favourable opinions on China’s rise, I was met with the same slightly confused response: of course — that China is a friend to Cuba, and China doesn’t seek war or domination over anyone.
I knew this myself: Castro described Xi Jinping as the greatest living revolutionary, China forgave $6 billion of Cuban debt in 2011, and the Cuban people are not subjected to daily Sinophobic hatemongering from the BBC, CNN, Fox et al.
The Cubans I spoke to didn’t see how there would be any other way to view the world’s most dynamic, poverty-alleviating country but in a positive light.
One party member told me: “The Communist Party of China is the party that Cuba has always had good links with. And also with Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cambodia, with all socialists, with Venezuela. In the case of Brazil, with the Workers Party.”
But what came across most strongly in my conversations that night, and every other day in Cuba, was the pride that Cubans have in their country and their achievements, despite the suffering imposed on it by the US.
One man told me: “Cuba has opened itself up to the world, in spite of all the things we are lacking.
“In spite of the fact we lack a lot, we will always continue to share with the world anything that they need. Not only with underdeveloped countries, but with developed countries. Italy is a country in Europe, and it’s not such a weak country economically, but Cuba was there with its doctors and its vaccines in the pandemic.”
Community pride and revolutionary defence
Anglophone anti-communists often try to make CDRs sound sinister by reducing them solely to the surveillance role they played in the days of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Wikipedia tells us that CDRs are simply “the eyes and ears of the revolution.” We then read that CDRs “exist to report ‘counter-revolutionary’ activity.”
While they have played a role in the vigilant defence of the government, as our speaker that night told us, they have a much broader role in the current context and are engaged in medical, social and environmental work instead of civil war.
CDRs might be unfamiliar to those of us who live in atomised cities with no political movement to draw hope from, but sinister they are not.
The one thing Cubans repeatedly asked us to do was go back to Britain and “tell the truth about Cuba.” I hope this account contributes something towards that aim.
As we saw that night, a CDR is many things: a CDR is a political engagement in a community, it is drinking, singing, eating and chatting with neighbours, it is a love of one’s community, a pride in one’s country and the help it gives to other countries, it is local kids shouting about football and superheroes, old men sounding off about politics, one guy at the back drinking slightly more than he should, and a community of talented musicians, organisers, caregivers and families.
Lewis Wedgwood is a history teacher and NEU rep. Follow him on Twitter @Lewis181278.
