One of the major shocks of my return to Cuba in 2011 after a two-year hiatus was stumbling across this museum in honor of Cuba’s neighborhood surveillance squads. The fact that CDR activities across Cuba had bene largely dead since the Special Period aside, the repackaging of their history into a museum serving foreign tourists on Obispo Street speaks to the collapse of the state’s own narratives about itself and the Revolution from the inside. Since September 1960 when the Communist Party founded them with Fidel Castro’s full-throated support, Cuba’s Comités de la Defensa de la Revolución [CDRs] were unique in the Communist world: organized at the block level, CDRs were primarily intended to make average citizens into voluntary intelligence agents who surveilled the activities, movements and statements of their neighbors on every block. They also submitted secret political evaluations on every individual and every family, determining each Cuban’s ideological suitability for a job, college or reward. By “proselytizing” (in their words) door to door, CDRs recruited members and organized night patrols, street cleaning and even blood drives. As shown in the Fotodiario series called “Viva Fidel: Censoring Censorship”, CDRs prioritized the elimination of any sign of citizen protest, especially the anonymous posting of anti-government signs or any act of sabotage. As occurred in the case I witnessed and included above, CDRs ensured that such protests were covered up by spray-painting over them, destroying evidence and hushing up bystanders by calling police. They then covered up their own cover-up by suppressing dissent and denying any condemnation of the government ever took place. After 1968, membership was no longer voluntary but became a mandatory act of loyalty. Yet CDRs were never supposed to be ossified into a museum, since they were allegedly active, living evidence of the people’s support for the state. On the other hand, something’s never change: when I tried to take pictures inside the CDR museum, my high degree of interest and knowledge proved suspect. Promptly, I was escorted out by a suspicious guide!
