“They made them clean and do other jobs where they don’t have people to do them”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 23 September 2024 — The educational authorities of Cuba had announced that the new “school in the countryside,” with which several grades began the 2024-2025 school year on September 2, would last only 15 days, but a week before the end of September, there are still many students who are obliged to participate in the project, sold by the regime as a “link between study and work.” This is the case of Lucía, who is in eighth grade at a school in Luyanó (Havana) and who, after spending several weeks employed in different tasks, has to prepare a report in writing and present it orally, explaining everything that they did.
One of the questions she has to answer is “what is a school garden and why is it important?” despite the fact that they weren’t sent to any garden at any time. “I don’t know what there is to explain, if all they did was go to a childcare center to entertain the little kids with their cell phones,” explains Marian, Lucía’s mother. At first, she says, they made them go get lunch and snacks for the children, “but an inspector came and told them that they couldn’t do that.”
“What I think is that they rotated them where they don’t have people, to make them work,” Marian says. “That’s a way to exploit young people.” In the end, she says, “what are they going to put in the report? Lies, nothing more.”
“What are they going to put in the report? Lies, nothing else”
Micaela, a resident of the Havana neighborhood of Ayestarán, also in eighth grade, was not taken out of school “because there was no transportation or position,” says her father, Luis. Instead, she spent last week, along with her classmates, going to school at regular hours to do “cleaning and beautification work.”
Other reports collected by 14ymedio said that some students were sent to wash bottles in a private company.
Although they presented it with fanfare in the official press, the authorities did not really fully explain why they resurrected a project of such infamous memory for the Cubans who grew up in the 70s and 80s, a project whose eradication was one of the most applauded measures when Raúl Castro came to power.
The families’ presumption was the lack of school supplies. Children forced to do these “alternative” tasks have not received the books they need, three weeks after the start of the school year. On the other hand, teachers have threatened students whose parents have refused to subject them to what they consider a “vexation” and something “inappropriate for their age,” despite the fact that they had been informed that it was “voluntary.” “They tell them that it will have an impact on their grades, that they won’t look good in the ranking, and why? They themselves are the ones who have not fulfilled their obligation and have not given the children school materials.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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