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You may be thinking that your little boat is making its way
upstream, but if the current is stronger, you will be going
backwards.
Make no shameful concessions to the empire’s ideology; I
have said this and today, I say it again.
Nobody shall ever read from my humble pen any opportunistic
praise that would besmirch his or her behaviour.
It is for this reason that I resolutely support the decision
by the Party and the Council of State to replace the
Minister of Education.
It is well known that, throughout my whole life, since I had
a revolutionary conscience, I have dedicated myself, first
and foremost, to the subject of education, ever since the
Literacy Campaign up to the universalization of higher
education. Despite the economic blockade and aggression, we
have managed to attain a privileged and unique position in
the world in this field.
The man in charge of this responsibility, Luis Ignacio Gómez
Guriérrez, was truly exhausted. He had lost energy and
revolutionary conscience. He should not have made the last
speeches and refer to future meetings with the educators of
the hemisphere and the world, extolling a body of work that
was the authentic product of numerous revolutionary cadres,
and not a personal accomplishment as he would have the
guests believe.
I am really sorry if any of our self-sacrificing teachers
interpret this as an unfair statement.
I should point out that in the course of ten years he
travelled abroad more than 70 times. During the last three
years he did so at a rate of one trip per month, always
under the excuse of promoting international cooperation with
Cuba. For this and other elements of judgement, we can no
longer trust him; to be more exact: we do not trust him at
all.
Who is to replace him? This was the other part of the
problem. It had to be done, and quickly. We searched through
many possibilities. A list of fifteen of the best was drawn
up; two had shown remarkable progress in that field:
Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, PhD in Educational Sciences,
currently the rector of the Frank País Higher Pedagogical
Institute in Santiago de Cuba. She graduated in 1980,
accumulated teaching experience in a wide variety of
educational responsibilities, with distinction; she is 52
and at the triumph of the Revolution, in her hometown, the
capital of the former Oriente Province, she had just turned
two years old.
Cira Piñeiro Alonso holds a Summa Cum Laude Bachelor’s
Degree in Psychology, Provincial Director of Education in
Granma Province, with 16 years of experience in various
teaching capacities. Her success as head of education in
Granma has been acknowledged by the entire country. She is
39 years old.
Both comrades, because of their merits and achievements,
were proposed by the candidacy committee and elected as
deputies to the National Assembly.
Both of them shall be instated in the Ministry of
Education: Ena Elsa as Minister and Cira Piñeiro as
assistant to the Minister and future cadre in the position
to which she is appointed. They shall be replaced in their
current tasks by professionals plucked from our
inexhaustible reservoir of teachers and revolutionaries.
In this special and important case, besides my personal
assessment, I was fully consulted and informed.
When I had the privilege of also being consulted on the eve
of the election of the Council of State, I did not hesitate
in proposing that prestigious military leaders –who brought
our heroic people glory and moral authority– such as
Leopoldo Cintras Frías and Álvaro López Miera, who are
mature, modest, brimming with experience and energy, younger
than the military officer who is one of the strongest and
most threatening candidates for the leadership of the
empire, should be proposed to the National Assembly as
candidates for membership in the Council of State. I know
other cadres, quite a bit younger than they are, highly
qualified, with excellent training and not very publicized,
people whom we must consider.
I don't like in the least to offend anyone, but I cannot
hesitate in explaining the facts with absolute clarity in
order to protect the work of the generations who have
contributed their sweat, sacrifice and, in several
instances, even their health and their lives to the
Revolution.
I hope that my compatriots understand that the forced work
imposed on me by nature at this stage of my life obliges me,
both to friends and adversaries, to express my thinking
straightforward and with the irrefutable moral evidence
within my reach. Therefore, I shoulder full responsibility
for this decision, whatever the reactions and consequences
may be.
The enemy libels will accuse me of applying psychological
terror from a position of moral authority. It is absolutely
nothing of the kind for those who are conscious of the fact
that true psychological and physical terror –with endless
human and moral suffering for our people– would come from
the return of imperial domination in Cuba. In such a sad
case, the cause would not be a lack of literacy or culture,
but a lack of conscience.
I shall never resign myself to the idea of anyone aspiring
to power out of selfishness, complacency, vanity and the
supposed indispensability of a human being.
I shall express my modest opinion while I can and need to do
so.
Together, the living and the dead shall fight on!
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 22, 2008
6:18 p.m. |
