Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
Those of us who live in Cuba are accustomed to everything inaugurated
with a social character, like bakeries, the whole health system, like
polyclinics, every engineering work, like causeways, every innovative
idea, like biotechnology developments, has the exclusive paternity of
Fidel Castro. Still today, five years since he retired from public
events due to illness, we know beforehand that in every celebration,
behind every anniversary, in the official discourse of the event, there
will be a direct mention of his brilliant conception. If right now we
stopped, frozen, pushed pause, the impression of a future Cubanologist
would be that Fidel Castro was the man of more or less normal
intelligence governing a country of morons, because he was the only one
who ever had an idea, ideas that his government rushed to implement.
However, this Cubanologist, in his extended research, would find that
despite all the praise-filled speeches, in recent times, many of those
brilliant paternities have been archived, put on the shelf, especially
in Education. Take, for example, the Schools in the Countryside, the
Student Work Brigades (BET), the Pioneers Action Force (FAPI), the
"emerging teachers," those Supermen of teaching formed for the career
that should teach all subjects in secondary schools, classrooms with
just 20 students.
I only speak of what is most striking because I know it well, but my
Cubanologist — and anyone — will be able to find other examples.
August 12 2011
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