Hernández proposes installing security cameras on the blocks to replace the snitches
14ymedio, Havana, 17 September 2024 — Former Cuban spy Gerardo Hernandez argued on Monday that the organization he coordinates – the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) – is not, as everything seems to indicate, anachronistic. However, fewer and fewer people , especially young people, want to take on leadership positions in the country’s more than 138,000 neighborhoods. “Who takes on the tasks of the committees?” he cried, when interviewed by Bohemia magazine.
“When you approach someone to take up a position on a committee, the answer is usually that after working eight hours there is not enough time to get involved in the organization’s tasks, because they have to cook – not only women, sometimes men too. If you go to a student, they tell you that the university takes up a lot of their time and they can’t get involved in community tasks either,” he explains.
There remain the elders of the neighborhood, old cadres of the CDRs founded by Castro and for whom the ex-spy promises a new splendor. Now 64 years after their foundation, however, the CDRs seem to have lost all function and the ex-spy attempts to recall it: “It is not idle to say that it is a privilege for any country in the world to have on the blocks, in the neighborhoods, an organization that, no matter how many difficulties we have in its functioning – good, regular or bad – offers the facility of being able to pick up a phone to call one of our leaders in any municipality.”
“When you approach someone to take a position on a committee, the answer is usually that after working eight hours there is not enough time to get involved in the tasks of the organization.”
The speaker is a “hero of the Republic of Cuba,” Bohemia reminds readers, and his arguments should be heard at the highest levels. “He does not forget that for many, the time of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution had already passed, because there were no more firecrackers, threats, or aggression, but they were also quite inactive,” comments the magazine.
Hernández is concerned about the networks, where he intends to “not be left behind” in terms of propaganda. It is about “positioning lab
