STOP «IDIOTIZATION»!

Signed and reaffirmed
- (Julio César) Guanche just explained a whole decalogue that characterizes the meaning of being a revolutionary

, and the first thing I am going to say is that I agree with him.

Valid by feasible
- I agree with him except when he leaves out the concern expressed here about the diverse and possible culture of country persons, about the view of the world of the rural worker.

Who knows?
- Once a writer, when talking about the country persons’ thought, he said that they were not ignorant, but their culture was rather «more» profound «that»...

Alfredo Guevara, President of the of the New Latin-American Cinema Festival in Havana, filmmaker and socialist revolutionary, takes part for the second time in the panel discussion conducted by the National Board of the Federation of University Students (FEU) in Casa de la Amistad (friendship house) on July, 2007, where he dispels the students’ doubts. Arnaldo Martín, President of the Federation of University Students (FEU) in the Rubén Martínez Villena Higher Pedagogical Institute (ISP), in Alquizar, understands that a farmer cannot speak about planes, but he can certainly speak about land and sowing; and he wonders if it wouldn’t be an inaccuracy to assert that they «don’t have any cultural level».

Frank suitability
- Its is clear that farmers have an extensive culture; but culture definition includes a great amount of acquired knowledge, habits, food, etc., expressed in everyday life and passed on by tradition. Nowadays, land has to be competently cultivated, since we are living in a new era, where culture and knowledge, at least the knowledge I refer to, are linked to efficiency.

Alfredo leads himself back to events gone by, which he considers to be starting points, to share his recent experiences that illustrate what he wants to communicate.

Technicians are needed
- Some years ago, by Fidel’s initiative, certain schools in the countryside, located in agricultural productive areas, became agricultural technical schools. Graduates from these schools, full of academic knowledge that embraces other methods of land cultivation, would advise farmers with that traditional agricultural culture, from which one also has to learn, so that production be more rational. But farmers’ children, who were the cornerstone of the quarry of such technical schools, with time they began to study Information Science and Technology, to leave the countryside for the city, and many of these Institutes were back to their original condition of regular schools. And the result? Up to the moment, the country abounds in small productive farms and we need specialists to give guidance to farmers who apply the new model of production.

Moral teaching
- About the university and my student experience in the School of Philosophy and Arts of the University of Havana, I can say that that was a fabulous epoch. Judging by what our musicologist and director of the Camerata, Zenaida Romeu

, told us here, the same happened to me, I was so lucky, I had extraordinary teachers.

Alfredo evokes those classes. He reveres the memory of his teachers, he feels indebted to them and he attracts the students’ attention so that they know what’s more important.

- The great lesson is how to learn to study. A university student never ends studding, he/she has to know how to get to a book, to a certain experimentation or laboratory practice, and has to know about the human being. Whether he/she is a specialist in surgery or an expert in physiological mechanisms, he/she has to study constantly. Study, and consequently, culture, to be considered as such, should be in constant enrichment.

Formula, but not a cereal one
- When I came to this panel discussion, I wasn’t so clear about how to behave. I wondered if the university students were indeed cultured, if the graduates from the higher education level have been taught how to study, and if passion for study, for deepen, for respect and love for complexity have been instilled in them.

- Some of the people like us, who see in complexity the richness of the human being, should had fought, for a long time, against leaning, foolishness and ideological formula of philosophical conceptions that might be seen as Marxist. In accordance to my concept –as I respect myself, I demand respect for my opinions-, such «attachment» was part of the phenomenon of the schools for revolutionary training, it seems that it is disappearing today, although I am not so sure. Little as it might seem, our media or other means of information have resorted for years to a terrifying simplification, not understanding that to reduce thought to catechism is a contribution to the intelligence impoverishment.

Even so, in case that the university students have «lack of intellect», as a last resort their lack wouldn’t be given by catechism, simplification, the media or weaknesses or strengths of the schools for revolutionary training, or by the ideological formula, but by themselves.

Council Canons
- Any university student, who doesn’t feel curiosity for research, he/she could have had the opportunity of studding at the university or at any higher scientific or technical institute, but certainly wont have, a deeply rooted and developed intellectual vocation.

- Young people do not approach old people like us, they treat us with respect and ceremony, but they do not approach us as much as we would like. In several occasions, I have had the opportunity of being invited to go on exchanges with students, and now I wonder, because I don’t know, neither I am close enough to you nor I am describing you, if the members of the Federation of University Students nowadays take exams just to get a degree or if they are qualified to be, from their position of university students, complete models of that need of obtaining the condition of intellectuals, paradigm of the huge meaning of what is defined in you as the love for knowledge.

Adalberto « Pepo» Hernández, Vice-President of the National Federation of University Student, considers that the world of knowledge would be going back to its origins, to the epoch of the first western sages and philosophers, when there was a close relationship among all the subjects of knowledge, when science and philosophy were the same.

Burgeoning of the left
- Philosophy, philo and sophia in Latin, is nothing else but love for knowledge and wisdom. Philosophy is not the Marxist, Leninist, Indian, Chinese or Greek philosophy, it is, above all, love for knowledge. In that sense, an intellectual has to be a philosopher, someone who reveres knowledge. I also, like the rest of the guests, each one in their own way, defend and proclaim the importance of the love for knowledge in the current, universal and worldwide society: just with the love for knowledge, one can have access... to knowledge.

Speaking of what the revolutionary of today should represent, Alfredo believes that men and women should be more modern, more « deep-rooted, but with great flexibility», in the time they live. He also made reference to what he considers as one of the historical missions of the youth, task that Fidel is already carrying out.

- The youth has an important task to carry out that, with the exception of some places, it is not the one of the sacrifice of rifle and life, but the one of invisible heroism: to re-establish socialism and to save the left; young people will have to make that contribution. The Cuban Revolution has been a model in this aspect and it should continue to be so, y and it is in a certain way, just by means of a great leader and not all of us contribute yet. By recovering health and starting to write, and to write the way he does it, and to tackle the issues he deal with, Fidel is giving, from the theoretical and ideological point of view, the most important contribution. Certainly, he is someone who does not stand only to have hypothesis, he always aspires the theory to become an action, and we should take care of him so that he does not take the rifle by himself.

Language and thought
Carlos Lage Codorníu, President of the National Federation of University Students is worried that the miseries of the consumer society could penetrate and have an influence on us through the media

. Alfredo does not reject this worry.

- That is another factor that dulls the intelligence in the country. Fidel brings about the Battle of Ideas, and the media brings about the battle of systematic «idiotization» of the Cuban people.

Al the same time, Oscar Chongo, President of the Federation of University Students of Manual Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Culture of Havana is alarmed about the turn that our culture could take because of certain type of music, and to what Zenaida Romeu called «musical monovalence». Alfredo does not totally agree with the young people’s criteria; and he ends up his speech by explaining why.

- I think that it is not and should ever be about prohibitions, but about avoiding an invasion in such a way that we do not have the right to have other expressions. The media should help us both in assuring diversity, the wide richness that our musical expressions have and in saving the language: language and thought are the same. The better you express, the better you think. When someone impoverishes his/her speaking, impoverishes the reactions and the logic and illogical linkage of knowledge –illogicality can also be valuable. What we do have to prohibit is that ignorant people impose their language in the media.

See «La odiosa función de cuatro políticos» (The annoying role of four politicians), Alma Mater no.457, nov/2007

See «Zenaida Romeu. El sonido de una directora» (Zenaida Romeu. The sound of a director.), Alma Mater no. 456, oct/2007

See «Los universitarios de ahora mismo» (The university students of today), Alma Mater no. 457, nov/2007

Students are involved in politics the same way the transformer revolutionaries of all epoch were involved in it: the policy of fighting with all the means to modify a regime that the oppressed are not able to endure. A student is more than a university student, a student is a citizen and a member of society.

Julio Antonio Mella, 7 de mayo de 1927

Colaboración de: Yakelyn Hernández