COMMITTEES FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTION

Block-to-block vigilante committees established in September 1960 to ensure internal security and public control, and counter the increased anti-government activity then becoming evident, “fighting against the counterrevolutionary class enemy.”  Originally, each Comité de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR) had the sole purpose of serving as an adjunct to the security apparatus of the Interior Ministry and the armed forces, identifying counter revolutionaries at the local level, keeping track of their activities, and informing the authorities.   During the national emergency created by the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CDRs became a major civil defense force, rounding up numerous actual and suspected enemies of the regime for the revolutionary tribunals to dispose of.  They also helped keep the population mobilized for defense.  During the Missile Crisis of 1962, the CDRs heightened their mobilization and surveillance roles.

During the 1968 confiscation of small business, the CDRs played a vital role by assigning “volunteers” to guard expropriated properties and “people’s administrators” to supervise the businesses.  It thus took only a day to move thousands of individual operations into public ownership.

As the CDRs evolved, they developed several new roles.  Crime prevention was a logical extension of their primary function of revolutionary vigilance.  All CDR members stand guard duty for about four hours a night each month.  They patrol unarmed, to report robberies or unusual activities to the police or militia, but often capture thieves and burglars and hold them for the police.  Most individual tried before the people’s tribunals have been apprehended by the local CDR who are regularly relied on for testimony about the behavior and morals of those appearing before the tribunals.  In cases of banishment or house arrest, the CDRs are responsible for enforcing the tribunal’s sentence.

Other functions of these neighborhood watch committees include reporting lazy workers and absentees, catching truants, organizing “click patrols” to check on the use of electricity, and listing the possessions of individuals who ask to emigrate.  The CDR also plays a significant role in the indoctrination and propaganda process.  Each committee holds seminars on Marxism-Leninism, the goals of the Revolution, Cuban history (from a Marxist perspective), the sugar harvest, or such current affairs as (in the 1960s) the Vietnam War.  Ideas for topics and approaches to instruction come from government and party committees on revolutionary instruction who advise local CDRs.

The functions of the CDRs have so expanded that they are now facilitating the local implementation of the policies of a range of government ministries.  They have mobilized their members’ volunteer labor in agriculture and production.  They have held health drives, immunization campaigns, saving drives, and recycling campaigns.  They watch the quality of local services and local education.  In the early 1980s their membership totaled nearly 5 million Cubans over 14 years of age (out of a total population of approximately 11 million), in 30,000 neighborhood CDRs with an average membership of 120 to 150, grouped in 4,500 sectional directorates supervised by 200 district directorates, which came under 6 provincial directorates immediately subordinate to the National Directorate.  Almost every work center, apartment building, people’s farm, or city block has its local CDR, directed by a president and divided into a number of subcommittees (frentes) that coordinate their activities with various government organs.  So extensive an organizational structure makes it difficult for people to avoid contact with a CDR, making the vigilance role that much more easily accomplished.