Today the largest mass organization in the country is celebrating its anniversary, it reaches its 63rd birthday and although it is already combing some gray hair, it has a young soul and is vigorously projecting itself from the neighborhood to maintain its essence. Safeguard the conquests of the Revolution.
It is true that these are not the same times, nor the same conditions, in recent years we have lived through difficult times, of lack and economic hardship, and the neighborhood has had to grow, join and even multiply so that the organization, which is to say the family Cedista has a little more and preserves his desire to do and even his joy to carry out all the responsibilities and tasks.
But we can never forget the noble reasons why the CDR emerged, we cannot forget that September 28, 1960, when the people gathered in front of the Presidential Palace (today the Museum of the Revolution) approved the proposal of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro to establish a system of collective revolutionary surveillance, thus emerging the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, in response to four firecrackers that the counterrevolution exploded while the people of Havana listened to the maximum revolutionary leader, fresh from making a transcendental intervention before the XV Period of Sessions of the UN General Assembly.
Nor should we forget that in that founding speech, Fidel indicated that the easy things are not those that would give the best results in the long run, but rather the difficult ones and those that are worth doing and warns: No one should think that the coming years will be passive. and assured:
"What makes our people happy is knowing that the Revolution did not end on January 1, 1959, but rather the future began; tomorrow's history will be the fruit of the efforts of all the people."
And how much certainty in his words. The road has not been easy, always besieged and cornered by an imperialist blockade that does not allow us to breathe, a policy denounced on more than thirty occasions in the UN Assembly, the same UN in which Fidel, with all the courage and shame that distinguished he denounced it so many times. The same UN that just a few days ago welcomed and listened to our president Miguel Díaz Canell defend our rights.
For these and so many more reasons we have to maintain the essence of our largest mass organization, close the doors to skepticism and be encouraged by the will to continue fighting and winning as our people have always done.
And today when the 480 delegates and 120 guests from all the Cuban provinces, present at the 10th CDR Congress, debate, propose and support, we will know that all of us who defend this country and each of its conquests are there. That is why we must continue putting our heart into the neighborhood as Fidel did 63 years ago with combativeness and resistance.
