This card, commonly called a carnet in Cuba, belonged to the mother of Ernesto Chávez. She joined her local Comité de Defensa de la Revolución [CDR] soon after PSP strategists founded a block-to-block network of these organizations nationwide in the fall of 1960. At the time, the creation of CDRs—whose members’ task was to snoop on neighbors in order to surveil their attitudes and activities—was promoted as a temporary response to terrorist bombs planted by former agents of the Batista dictatorship. However, within months, their role in Cuba’s emerging security state apparatus became permanent, especially after the CIA’s training of former Batista supporters and the sons of politically moderate Cuban exiles for an invasion was widely reported in Cuba. The defeat of that operation at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 prompted recruitment to rise until 1968 when membership for all citizens became mandatory. Featuring the image of a Cuban armed with a machete and shield, ready to kill or fight as needed, the front of the carnet also explains CDRs’ purpose in Fidel Castro’s words: “To be a member of the Committee for the Defense [of the Revolution] means having a spirit of sacrifice, being an example to other citizens, working, watching out for the counterrevolutionaries; but, in addition, it entails a duty to capture [other adherents], a labor of proselytism.” Ernesto Chávez Collection, University of Florida.
