Monrovia, September 28, 2020 - With a different celebration, but not because it is atypical, this September 28 will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), a mass organization whose objectives include mobilizing all the people in the tasks of defending the Revolution and the conquests of socialism, through direct work with the people and families of the community. Before the founding of the CDR, there were several organizations with different aims, which were unified with the creation of the new mass organization that unites all the communities and the people and defends their interests equally.
With six decades of contributing to the surveillance of the neighborhood, the most unifying organization in Cuba is composed of 138,000 committees.
The Commander in Chief's thoughts on the CDRs are valid in this celebration:
"The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution are the organization in the rear, the rear that sometimes also becomes the front line of struggle, for the struggle against the fifth column, to fight against saboteurs and terrorists, to fight against the agents of imperialism. (Fidel, September 28, 1961. First Anniversary of the CDR)
"The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution have become an important force of the Revolution and a trench that instills respect for the enemies of our homeland; the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution have become, in addition to a new institution, a contribution of the Cuban Revolution to the increasingly rich experience of humanity. (Fidel, 9/28/62.Second Anniversary of the CDR)
"The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, under the leadership of the Party and in union with the other mass organizations, constitute a solid and indestructible bastion of our historic and glorious Revolution. (Fidel, 28/9/75. Fifteenth Anniversary of the CDR)
"In the CDR our people have a combative, enthusiastic, versatile and irreplaceable instrument, on which the Revolution will always rely for all its tasks". (Fidel, 1975 Central Report to the 1st Congress of the PCC)
"The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution are an emblem of our united, enthusiastic and working people, who create and defend with their own hands the future of the socialist fatherland. (Fidel, September 28, 1977. Closing of the 1st Congress of the CDR)
"Sometimes the comrades remember kindly, fraternally, affectionately, that I had a hand in founding the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. That's true, but no one really imagines - not me - nor anyone else the kind of organization we were creating? (Fidel, 28/9/77. Closing of the 1st CDR Congress)
"It seems fair to me to say that the history of our glorious Revolution could not be written without the history of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. (Fidel, 28/9/86. Closing of the 3rd Congress of the CDR)
Embacuba Liberia