The CDRs and Cuban Reconciliation

Havana/In these days of the Pope when a great deal has been said about reconciliation between Cubans, meetings have been held to prepare the September 28 celebration of the 55anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Great effort has been put into the creation of the 55 Anniversary Youth Detachments and the Neighborhood Prize presentations.

The unity around Revolutionary ideas that gave rise to the organization is offered as the irrevocable currency for maintaining the conquests achieved and constructing the prosperous and sustainable socialism promoted by the Communist Party.

We Cubans have no need to reconcile ourselves for religious, regional, ethnic, linguistic or other reasons of any nature, other than the ideological differences introduced on the island beginning with the promotion of the class struggle backed by Marxism-Leninism.

The unity that is proclaimed from the official discourse implies the exclusion of those who have political ideas that differ from those posited by only permitted party. This unity is understood in the context of the dictatorship of the proletariat, under which there can be no possible understanding reached with the “class enemy.”

The unity that is proclaimed from the official discourse implies the exclusion of those who have political ideas that differ from those postulated by only permitted party.

This unity is alien to reconciliation, because the reconciliation to which we are exhorted from the pulpits does not imply the conversion of the disaffected into militants, but the acceptance of differences on both sides in an equality of conditions. I remember the poet Heberto Padilla pointing out, “reconciliation and capitulation don’t rhyme.”

We’ll see if this spirit of reconciliation ends with insults and beatings against those who emerge from the church to march peacefully through the streets on Sunday to demand respect for human rights and freedom for those still imprisoned for political reasons.

The rulers clad in their guayaberas who listened to the Masses and homilies are the only ones who have the capacity, or rather, the authority, to issue the order to stop the repression and to categorically prohibit the repudiation rallies. This coming anniversary of the organization that was created so that some Cubans would monitor and betray their compatriots will be an excellent occasion to demonstrate that the holy words did not fall into the void.