Anselmo, my favorite Neighborhood Watch president.
A Neighborhood in Crisis.
I was about sixteen or seventeen at the time, and the neighborhood committee —our local branch of the Comité de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR)—was in shambles.
We had no president ! A leadership vacuum in such a critical organization couldn’t go unfilled for long, so we were scrambling to elect a new one, fast!
The neighborhood watchers had to stop doing whatever we were doing and get ready for the upcoming emergency elections to give our support to the best candidate who would represent and protect the interests of the revolution to the end!
In the days leading up to this hasty and inevitably chaotic election, the head of security and the rest of the committee’s leadership couldn’t stop talking about it. Maybe they mentioned what happened to the last president. If they did, I missed it. Honestly, I don’t even remember who the guy was.
Was he a traitor? I still wonder because, even after all these years, in Cuba today, being branded a traitor doesn’t require selling military secrets or spying for the CIA. It only takes complaining a little too loudly about too many problems—or simply wearing the wrong garment.
I myself once endured a family reprimand for wearing a t-shirt with a "Harland County U.S.A" sign. The shirt was a gift I had received from my cousin's boyfriend who happened to be a polish teacher learning Spanish in Cuba. Ah, the shirt coincidentally was also polish as in Made in Poland.
A Neighborhood Under Pressure.
My neighborhood, like many in Havana’s Vedado and Miramar districts, wasn’t exactly a revolutionary stronghold.
My family —my mom, my sister, and I —were holdouts from an older world. My godfather had been a prominent figure at the Sacred Heart of Jesus hospital (now called González Coro), and our neighbors had similar histories. They were Doctors who had once owned farms in Matanzas, a dentist who still had his chair from his pre-revolutionary private clinic, lawyers and professors from Havana University.
Some of them had left the country, but others, for one reason or another, stayed. For those of us still there, survival meant adapting —or at least pretending to. The Revolution didn’t offer much in the way of choices. You integrated, or you faced the consequences.
But this balancing act —half compliance, half resistance— didn’t make the election of a new president of the Neighborhood Watch easy. The committee leaders were tearing their hair out, desperate to find someone willing to be president. The options were very limited.
The Big Night.
When election day came, the neighborhood gathered at the corner building for the meeting. I went too —not because I cared, but because I didn’t want to hear my mom nagging me about college next year.
As usual, the scene was a mix of gossip, side hustles (prison hooch and loose cigarettes), and chaos. But suddenly, the noise stopped and an almost inaudible question filled the air: Wait, what the hell is Anselmo doing here?
Anselmo at large.
Anselmo and his relatives lived two doors down from my family in a well-kept, three-story building —clearly a relic of better days. They were the kind who kept to themselves: well-dressed, smelling good, always in their car, and never part of the committee or the community, for that matter.
In Cuba, avoiding the CDR was basically a cardinal sin. People like Anselmo’s family would’ve been labeled la escoria —the scum. And in revolutionary Cuba, that wasn’t just an insult; it was an official slogan: ¡Que se vaya la escoria! —Kick the scum out!
But that night, Anselmo showed up —after years of avoiding the committee— looking like a man on a mission. Anselmo’s family had spent years hiding from the committee. But in Cuba, you don’t stay out of the system forever —you either fight it, or you find a way in.
Anselmo Makes His Move.
The committee member in charge of neighborhood security got things rolling, introducing the agenda: electing a new president. But as expected, nobody wanted the job. The excuses came thick and fast: bad backs, elderly relatives, too many kids to look after —you name it.
Just as panic began setting in among the committee leaders, someone yelled, Shut up—Anselmo wants to speak!
Anselmo stood up. He started with a humble apology for his family’s failure to appreciate the importance of the committee. His speech oozed patriotism — and before he could even finish, someone shouted: "¡Anselmo for president!"
The room erupted. Anselmo presidente! Anselmo presidente!
No vote was necessary. Anselmo was the guy!
The Payoff.
A few years later, I ran into Anselmo’s granddaughter, Susana. But this time, it wasn’t at the foot of her apartment building.
Anselmo had played his cards right, seamlessly integrating his family into the very system they had once avoided. The payoff? His granddaughter, now a celebrated journalist, heralding the revolution's triumphs—a bitter irony, echoing the compromises many Cubans have had to make to survive.