CDR Symbol of Snitching

CDR: Symbol of Snitching / Julio Cesar Alvarez
Posted on September 28, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – In the same way that a blind
woman with scales is an allegory of justice and a skeleton with a scythe
is the allegory of death, the image that identifies the CDR should be
the allegory of betrayal.

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. The
apparatus of the most formidable surveillance and repression of the
Communist dictatorship began to take form, implemented by the rebels in
January 1959.

The scapegoats to justify its creation were the same ones the government
has used ever since: imperialism and the opposition.

"We can say that the Committees for Defense were engendered in the
public square, in the midst of the struggle against imperialism, in the
heat of battle and the insolent noise of the counterrevolutionary
bombs," Fidel Castro once said.

But creating such a massive apparatus of betrayal and repression could
not be the work of a night of fireworks. The people of Cuba already knew
well the sound of those explosions, thanks to the terrorism work of the
rebels themselves led by Fidel Castro over the whole of the island to
destabilize the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

It was, however, a well-conceived plan and organized in the style of
Hitler, to make massive political denunciation the ultimate weapon
against dissent.

The CDR has been, in addition, the shock troops against opponents.
Beatings, threats, psychological terror, destruction of property. Each
and every one of these methods have been used systematically against
active opponents.

The people's mob, which is not all Cubans, has found in this
organization an oasis of impunity to unleash their passions when they
are incited against their neighbors.

Criminals and corrupt officials, however, have had better luck. The CDR
doesn't watch and betray them with the same frequency as it does the
opponents. Among them and the organizations of the past there has always
existed a kind of symbiosis, where many times it is the money from the
crimes and corruption that have paid for the pigs' heads and the drinks
for the street parties, where they celebrate the birth of this organization.

The wood for cooking the stews burns again this September 28th on the
streets of the island, like the fires of the inquisition burned the
heretics. This is the 53rd birthday of a Castro regime organization
dedicated to political betrayal, or as we say here in Cuba, to snitching.

By Julio Cesar Álvarez

From Cubanet

27 September 2013

Source: "CDR: Symbol of Snitching / Julio Cesar Alvarez | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/cdr-symbol-of-snitching-julio-cesar-alvarez/