Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (Spanish: Comités de Defensa de la Revolución), or CDR, is a network of neighborhood committees across Cuba. The organizations, described as the "eyes and ears of the Revolution", exist to promote social welfare and report on "counter-revolutionary" activity. As of 2010, 8.4 million Cubans of the national population of 11.2 million, were registered as CDR members.
The CDR system was formed by Fidel Castro on September 28, 1960, following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. The slogan of the CDR is, "¡En cada barrio, Revolución!" ("In every neighborhood, Revolution!"). Fidel Castro proclaimed it "a collective system of revolutionary vigilance." Established, "So that everybody knows who lives on every block, what they do on every block, what relations they have had with the tyranny, in what activities are they involved and with whom do they meet."
Read more about Committees For The Defense Of The Revolution: Activities
Famous quotes containing the words committees, defense and/or revolution:
“Cry cry what shall I cry?
The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees.
One secretary will do for several committees.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““I suppose with the French Revolution for a father and the Russian Revolution for a mother, you can very well dispense with a family,” he observed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)