The Kingdom of the Lie

The Kingdom of the Lie / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on April 19, 2015

Rebeca Monzo, 19 April 2015 — A magnificent professor of philosophy,
deceased now for some years, of whom I had the honor to be a student,
would invariably begin his classes with a saying. He would assert that
all of life's wisdom could be found in a compendium of Spanish popular
sayings.

In an article published in the daily Granma, on 15 april of this year —
a fragment of which I reproduce below — the First Vice President of the
Councils of State and of Ministers, during his visit to the city of
Matanzas, urged solutions to grave problems in education. He stated,
"There is a deficit of 1,086 teachers, primarily in the municipality of
Cárdenas and surrounding areas, and so far in this school year, 244
requested leave of absence…"

The Minister of Education remarked that, "One of the causes of the
exodus of teachers, and of the current lack of activity, is the teaching
overload that the teachers remaining in the schools take on." The First
Vice President also inquired about the construction status of the
schools, 43.4% of which have a rating of average or poor.

How is it possible that only six months ago — when announcements were
made with great fanfare in the press, radio and television about the
start of the 2014-15 school year — it was said that everything
(teachers, classrooms, uniforms and books) was ready? It is obvious that
there were lies then, as there have been in all spheres throughout all
these years.

As a recent highlight of this string of falsehoods, the decisive blow
was administered by the official delegation, organized and prepared by
the regime, to represent us at the recent Civil Society Forum during the
Summit of the Americas in Panama. The prefabricated members of this
delegation themselves were those charged with nakedly showing themselves
with their wrongdoing and the marginalized way they acted before the
press and international public opinion, exposing yet another of the
great lies of the regime.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Source: The Kingdom of the Lie / Rebeca Monzo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-kingdom-of-the-lie-rebeca-monzo/