-DATE- 19660927 -YEAR- 1966 -DOCUMENT_TYPE- SPEECH -AUTHOR- F. CASTRO -HEADLINE- CASTRO SPEAKS TO FRANK PAIS MARCHERS -PLACE- ORIENTE PROVINCE -SOURCE- HAVANA PRENSA LATINA -REPORT_NBR- FBIS -REPORT_DATE- 19660928 -TEXT- FIDEL CASTRO SPEAKS TO FRANK PAIS MARCHERS Havana PRENSA LATINA in Spanish 1248 GMT 27 September 1966--E (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY) (Text) Pinares de Mayari, Cuba, 27 September--Maj. Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), has announced that the production of fertilizer will be the principal field of industrial development in Cuba until 1970. The Prime Minister made these statements at a meeting in central Oriente Province with university and vanguard students who are following the route taken by the Frank Pais column, which was commanded by the present deputy prime minister and revolutionary armed forces minister, Maj. Raul Castro, during the war of liberation. The students, numbering more than 1,000 were in the fifth day of their trip through the Pinares de Mayari area when they met up with Fidel Castro, who was visiting the area. This area, on a mesa some 500 or 600 meters above sea level, is the site of a special vegetable planting program (words indistinct). A vast program of pine tree planting is also being carried out, and the exploitation of nickel deposits is also planned for future years. The region is considered one of the richest in this mineral and it also has deposits of cobalt and chromium. A fleet of 150 trucks is already working on the transportation and spreading of organic fertilizer. With regard to the growing of vegetables, Fidel Castro announced that from 8,000 to 9,000 women will be engaged in this work when the proper conditions have been established. Toward this end, construction is planned for shelters and for nurseries to care for the women's children after the construction of an agriculture technology school has been completed with a capacity for 500 scholarship student. These students will first have to complete the second year of basic secondary school in order to enter the school and they will quality as intermediate technicians upon completion of their studies. Fidel Castro then explained that once this group graduates, each of its members will be given charge of the cultivation of three caballerias in the area. He added that the first 300 students in the soils and fertilizer institutes will soon graduate and that by 1970, some 12,000 agriculture-cattle technology institute students will have graduated. After noting the need for the technicians to move into the rural areas, he again criticized the tendency of some state organizations to contract the technical career student before they complete their studies, calling this piracy. He went on to stress that this situation and the inherited shortage of technicians are causing large areas of production land to go without technicians, while the technicians are filling bureaucratic posts. He said that he principal contribution of the cities to the rural areas should be in terms of technicians, for the cities should restore to the rural areas the product of capitalist plundering. In this regard, the Prime Minister said that all the technicians should be placed in accordance with the needs of the country, and he said: "We must promote a minimum of urbanism and a maximum of ruralism." Fidel Castro called the great cities a distortion caused by the anarchic conditions of capitalism; "the great urban concentrations are not self-sufficient and they are uneconomical." He added that after the conditions of the exploitation of man by man, there remained the exploitation of the rural areas by the cities. He said that "in the future, no big cities will be developed, only medium-sized cities with every service and comfort." Analyzing the geological conditions in the Oriente area, the Prime Minister commented humorously that when he was a child, the climbing of the mountain to the mesa near his birthplace, some 500 to 600 meters high, was his first experience in the practice of the guerrilla warfare he led later in the Sierra Maestra. Further on he spoke of the economic conditions of the peasants in the area who had to move to the mountains, victims of the landowners in the lowlands. He declared that they helped enrich the guerrilla army and led to the triumph of the revolution. After explaining that a census giving an exact figure had not been made, he noted that approximately half a million peasants live in the mountains, mostly devoted to the growing of coffee. Fidel Castro said that the characteristics of the land and the lack of technical knowledge have prevented the peasants from increasing their productivity, but that the revolutionary government intends to contribute to the development of the crops with the introduction of appropriate manual machines and the use of fertilizers. In this regard, Maj. Fidel Castro announced the intention of using 400 young pilots trained specifically for the aerial spreading of fertilizer. They will be used over 500,000 caballerias in special areas. Speaking of the economic development of some fields in agriculture, he said that the mountain regions will produce no less than 3 million quintals of coffee and that in Camaguey, a program of planting fine lumber-producing trees, such as cedar and mohogony, is being carried out. He added that strawberries are already being harvested in the area of Banao, Las Villas, to be used in the production of Copelia brand ice cream. Grapes and asparagus are also being harvested in that area. The grapes are being used in the first experiments in making wine and the asparagus will soon be used by the national canning industry. Then Fidel Castro spoke of the need to have the leaders of the revolution move to the rural areas to investigate, on the spot, the needs of the peasantry, and he gave the example of a noticeable shortage of technical books in these areas, while their circulation was required by the existing avid desire to learn, Reiterating that books should be printed for the peasant communities, he said "that will be a task for the Book Institute." Finally, the Prime Minister termed impressive the revolutionary spirit of the men who live in the provinces of the country, the agricultural workers. As an example, he noted that all the mountain areas are filled with mountain units (of soldiers and militiamen) which maintain firm devotion, and he warned: "Let whoever want to check it fire a shot around here! It is an invincible force which has been created here!" Once the conversation ended, the students continued their march to Piloto del Medio to make camp. They continue their march today to Paraiso, some 13 kilometers from where they were yesterday. -END-