How did we arrive at a country like this?
A Havana resident was approached by a neighbor claiming authority to surveil him, reflecting the CDR neighborhood watch system established in 1960. The incident exemplifies 'anthropological damage'—cognitive and ethical deterioration caused by prolonged totalitarianism, including fear, servility, and loss of autonomy.
- CDR neighborhood surveillance committees established September 28, 1960
- Only 44 of 106 garbage trucks operational in Havana as of February 2026
- Havana generates 24,000-30,000 cubic meters of waste daily
- Center for Coexistence Studies has documented 'anthropological damage' since 2006
A viral video documents a Cuban resident confronted by a neighbor demanding ID for surveillance purposes, illustrating the psychological damage of decades-long totalitarianism amid urban collapse.
A man stepped out of his Havana apartment on a Monday morning and was stopped by his neighbor. She wanted his identity card. Her reason: her mother was the block's official watcher, and she needed to monitor him. The man, who had lived at that address for five or six months, found the encounter so jarring that he recorded it and posted the video online. It spread quickly across social media, not because the interaction was unusual in some abstract sense, but because it laid bare something Cubans live with daily—the machinery of state surveillance operating through the people next door.
The neighbor's claim to authority traces directly to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, known by their Spanish acronym CDR. These organizations were established on September 28, 1960, as a neighborhood-based surveillance and social control network. Each block has a designated "surveillance coordinator" whose job is to observe residents and maintain records. The system was designed to be comprehensive, to reach into every corner of daily life. In September 2025, Gerardo Hernández, a former spy who now serves as the national coordinator of the CDRs, insisted that every revolutionary block should have a functioning committee. Yet in practice, many neighborhoods have stopped holding CDR meetings altogether. Apathy has set in. The machinery still exists in people's minds, but it is grinding against less and less resistance.
What struck the man most was the anachronism of it all. Here was someone operating as though the 1970s or 1980s had never ended, as though these structures still served a purpose, as though the state's grip on daily life remained as tight as it once had been. He expressed his bewilderment plainly: the surrealism of living in a country where people still believed in systems that no longer functioned, if they ever truly had.
The incident connects to a concept that scholars have been developing for two decades: anthropological damage. Dagoberto Valdés and the Center for Coexistence Studies, working since 2006, use this term to describe the deep deterioration of a person's cognitive, ethical, and social capacities after prolonged exposure to totalitarianism. The damage manifests as fear, servility, social performance, and the erosion of personal autonomy. A neighbor demanding to see your papers to monitor you—this is anthropological damage made visible. In May 2025, the center presented its eighteenth report on the subject at Florida International University, drawing on testimony from roughly sixty Cubans both on the island and in exile. The report proposes, among other remedies, a "Law of Anthropological Restoration and Integral Human Development."
But the video captured something else too. Behind the man as he spoke, the streets of Havana were visible—piled with garbage. The city generates between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of solid waste each day. In February 2026, only 44 of the capital's 106 garbage trucks were operational, the rest immobilized by lack of fuel. The infrastructure of the city is collapsing. Power cuts are routine. Yet the surveillance apparatus persists, volunteer and unpaid, asking neighbors for their papers.
The man's frustration crystallized around this contradiction. While the country sinks under blackouts and refuse, someone approaches him asking, without compensation, to hand over his identity card so she can watch him. The absurdity was almost too much to articulate. He ended his account with a question that many Cubans seem to be asking themselves: How did we arrive at a country like this? The question hangs unanswered, a measure of the distance between what the state demands and what the people can endure.
Notable Quotes
A person asked me to give them my ID card to monitor me—like something from a dystopian novel, 1984 or Fahrenheit 451.— The Havana resident in the viral video
It seems surreal that people still live in the 1970s or 1980s, thinking these structures still function for anything.— The same resident, reflecting on the encounter
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made this particular moment go viral when surveillance has been part of Cuban life for decades?
Because he named the contradiction out loud. Everyone knows the CDRs exist, everyone knows neighbors watch neighbors. But seeing it happen in real time, with the city literally falling apart in the background, made the absurdity impossible to ignore.
The neighbor wasn't acting maliciously, though. She believed she had authority.
That's the deeper problem. She wasn't being cruel; she was being obedient to a system that taught her this was her role. That's what anthropological damage means—it's not just fear from above. It's the internalization of control so complete that people police themselves and each other without needing orders.
The report mentions a "Law of Anthropological Restoration." What would that even look like?
It's an acknowledgment that you can't just remove a system and expect people to function normally. Decades of totalitarianism doesn't leave when the government changes. It lives in how people think, what they fear, who they trust. Restoration would mean rebuilding those capacities—autonomy, ethical reasoning, the ability to act without performing for an invisible audience.
But the CDRs are still active, still being promoted by leadership.
Yes, and that's the other part of the contradiction. The state keeps insisting these structures matter while the country falls apart. It's as if surveillance is the last thing the government knows how to do, so it keeps doing it even as everything else fails.