-DATE- 19670129 -YEAR- 1967 -DOCUMENT_TYPE- SPEECH -AUTHOR- F. CASTRO -HEADLINE- CASTRO SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY OF MARTI'S BIRTH -PLACE- SAN ANDRES -SOURCE- HAVANA DOMESTIC TV & RAD -REPORT_NBR- FBIS -REPORT_DATE- 19670129 -TEXT- CASTRO SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY OF MARTI'S BIRTH Havana Domestic Television and Radio Service in Spanish 0300 GMT 29 January 1967--F/E (Speech by Prime Minister Fidel Castro at ceremonies inaugurating several buildings in San Andres, Pinar del Rio, and marking the 114th anniversary of Marti's birth--live) (Text) Comrades of the party and the government, residents of San Andres, pupils of the first boarding school of San Andres: It is with great pleasure that we meet tonight in a ceremony which for all of us has great importance. Many will think that the residents of San Andres have reason to feel happy on this day, but not only San Andres residents; we all have reason tonight to feel as happy as any San Andres resident. San Andres residents tonight see a stage in the swift development of this region, but we also see in the development of San Andres the work of the revolution and an idea of what our fatherland will be in the future. San Andres is a preview. In its social situation, particularly education, San Andres in about a year will be what we expect a large part of the nation, and if possible the whole nation, to be by 1975. San Andres is th first of the three pilot plans that are being carried out; that is, the first plan which can present a part of the plan carried out, because tonight we inaugurated the first boarding school for 300 students and five children's nurseries, the first of a number of projects in this town of a program that is to include another school like this, three schools smaller than this for 150 students, and five more children's nurseries. If the comrades of the Construction Ministry (Micons) maintain during 1967 the magnificent rate at which they carried out these first projects we have no doubt that by the end of this year, as far as San Andres is concerned, the plan will be completely finished. It is fair, therefore, that we recognize the efforts of the Micons comrades, and above all the Micon comrades of Pinar del Rio Province, because this school has been built (applause) in just six months. Six months ago there was nothing here. Six months ago only weeds grew here, and the land was quite flooded. There were practically no children's nurseries here six months ago; the selection of sites for the various schools and nurseries was just being completed, and the comrades, the architects, were working hard on the plans. Because in this case every school was to be located according to the distribution of the population, and always looking for th healthiest sites, the most adequate sites, nearest to the families whose children are going to those nurseries or those schools, our architects and planners visited every one of the sites. Working with them also was a team of comrades who were generally entrusted with the plan, but we must say that everybody has given the San Andres plan great cooperation. It was given by the comrades in the provinces; it was given by the army comrades and by the technician comrades and the Education Ministry comrades. In other words, this is an example of a plan which has been coordinated in a happy manner, and we have been able to count on everybody's enthusiasm. That is why it has progressed so far. This plan began to be conceived practically a year ago. In one year all the planting of coffee has been completed. Over a million coffee plants have been planted with anew technique, in terraces to protect the plants from erosion. The coffee is doing fine. It is clean. In the nurseries hundreds of women from this area worked to prepare the nurseries. In the planting of the coffee, hundreds of comrades of the Young Communist Union worked from the province and elsewhere. Hundreds of comrades of the army worked on it. In an effort to meet thee goals at the indicated dates, great mobilizations were made, and thanks to this the coffee planting plan was fully successful. Coffee is growing at an enormous rate. It is planted with advanced techniques, and this is not all. Maximum application of fertilizers are going to be made, and something more--even never techniques which consist of the application of growth hormones to that coffee are going to be used. This means that the residents of this region and all of us are going to be able to observe a new phenomenon. It used to be supposed that a coffee plant grew when it was planted, cared for, cultivated, cleaned of weeds, irrigated or rained on, and fertilized. Now there is something new. We are going to accelerate the growth process of these plants. In this sense, this is also going to become a pilot plan, and growth hormones are going to be applied to these million and some odd plants. Possibly by next year there will already be enough coffee to pick in these plantations. (applause) We must await the results. As I told you before, this is of an experimental nature, but the results we obtain here can be applied on other plantations and even to other crops. Returning to the subject to schools, I said that if the rate and enthusiasm with which work is being performed this year is maintained. By the end of the year all the installations should be finished, therefore all the children, all the children from one month of age to those in the last year of junior high school will have their own institutions. This means that all the population, all the children of this region--approximately 2,000--will have their childrens nurseries, their primary schools from the first through the third grade, and their schools of higher levels--from the fourth grade to the last year of high school. It is going to be the first place in the country to have this. It will be followed by Gran Tierra in Oriente Province and Vanao in Las Villas Province, in that order. They are not yet progressing at such a rapid rate as this region. However, this one will be converted into a veritable pilot plan of extraordinary interest. It is of extraordinary interest because possibly, possibly, a plan of this type, of this characteristics, has never been put into effect in any other country, and never put into effect with the characteristics that this plan is going to have. Possibly we will be the first country in the world to carry out a program of education of this magnitude, of this quality. We hope to do what we are doing here in San Andres throughout the entire country. The installations are of magnificent quality. We must congratulate the comrade architects who worked on these installations, which have a large amount of light, a large amount of ventilation. More healthful installations than these cannot be observed. The same thing can be said about the children's nurseries. They have the area for nursing children, and an area for those a little older. They have enclosed areas and outdoor areas where they can move with complete freedom. Young teachers and professors trained completely in these years of revolution have been selected to direct this school and to teach in it. Possibly their average age--adding the ages of all the comrades who are going to be in the administration and teaching of this school, including junior high school professors, primary school teachers, physical education professors, and agricultural technicians, adding the ages of all of them--is not more than 18 years. It is possible that never, no educational center, has ever had a teaching and administrative body as young as the personnel who are going to direct this school. They have graduated from our teaching institutes, from our technical institutes, others from the physical education and sports institute. This means that there was quality in the selection and training of the teaching personnel. There is youth, there is enthusiasm, and that is why we have the right to feel optimistic about the success of the education that is going to be imparted in this school. Women of this region are also going to work in the children's nurseries, women of this region who were trained in short courses to take care of the children. And in addition, at the head of each nursery will be a graduate teacher from the Makarenko Teachers Institute. The installation, the environmental conditions, the hygienic conditions, the personnel of the children's nurseries will be of high quality, and we can expect optimum work with the children from them. In these schools, the most important thing, however, will not be the quality of the installations, but the conception of these schools. There is no doubt that all of us have seen many schools in our countryside. Before the revolution there were not many. There were some schools in the country. Certainly a large part of the schoolage population of the countryside did not have schools or did not have teachers. The revolution first of all brought teachers, and every time it was possible a little school was built. But the teachers were brought to all the children of the countryside. Anyone would have said that his was a big victory, that this was a big step forward because the families were always asking for schools, teachers, and when a teacher arrived there was joy and when a school was organized there was happiness. And in any nation of this continent, it was always joy to receive a teacher or a school. We have achieved this, yet can we feel gratified about it? Is this something our people yearned for? Schools everywhere, teachers everywhere. But despite this we often see isolated schools, poor schools; often they are not schools but huts. And the children get there from shorter or longer distances, better or worse fed, and are in school only a few hours. When it was just one session they would spend four or five hours in school. What did the children do the rest of the day? Now they go to school and return home and eat lunch, and sometimes they also return in the afternoon. But undoubtedly the children had plenty of free time without anyone knowing what they were doing. Doing what? A boy with imagination invents anything--good and bad. And often the bad things ahead of the good ones. They do this to pass the time, to kill time. the children had no place for sports, no place to read a book. No books were available; it was supposed that each house had a library. There were no playing fields. They spent their time as they chose. It is precisely during these extracurricular hours that many bad habits are picked up where many vices are picked up, where the children go astray, and where they are really not going to develop their intelligence or their bodies. Under this system or idea the lives of children from the time they are a month old, in short from the period which social legislation calls (?working maternity), in other words when a mother can go back to work, from that moment a child can go to the nursery, and the lives of all the children will be perfectly organized. They will be perfectly cared for. They will go to the nurseries in the mornings, very early, and they will return to their homes at dusk. And when they are old enough for the first grade their entire life will be organized around the school. They will have their studies, playing fields, and food there. They will go there on Mondays and return on Friday and perhaps on Saturdays. It could, of course, be said that it is better that they go home on Fridays or that they use Saturdays for sports in the school (applause) and they go home at noon on Saturdays. This would mean that the teachers would have free time, a half day Saturday and all day Sunday. We have no doubt at all that the children will be anxious for Monday to come to go to school because they will have everything at school, at the installations; their lives will be perfectly organized in a pleasant and attractive manner. In other words there will not be any more hours to kill, no more chances for children to go astray to pick up bad habits. They will always be under the supervision of highly-qualified personnel. They will be educated mentally, physically,, and socially. They will pick up the best habits a society can give a human being, the best sentiments, the best ideas. They will be prepared for life in those schools. If we ask why so many conflicts in a human being, if we ask why so many quarrels, so much suffering, so much mortification, if we ask why so many devote themselves to making life bitter for so many, the answer no doubt is that human beings have been unprepared for life, that they have not been taught to life socially, to live in relation with others, they have not been prepared for life in human society. Of course, this could not take place in any form where the way of obtaining food, their way of making a living is an isolated, primitive, and selfish way. That is why all those things happened which we saw expressed magnificently here tonight about the history of the peasants, the history of the foremen, the landowners, the rural guards, the history of the peasant and his wife, the kilometers of distance to walk to (?hospitals), not knowing what hospital to take her to, how much it would cost her, how he would pay for it, without any communications, who knows how many kilometers away, without money, paying a third or half of what he harvested every year to the landowner so that thousands of families worked for a family. It is logical that under such conditions nothing could exist that looked like this. It is logical that under such conditions one could not even think about educating man to live in society, because under such conditions man tried not to live but to survive. And no one taught him to survive. To the contrary, everyone tried to survive by himself in his own way, or in any way. It was simply a matter of survival. And to survive they did whatever occurred to them. Many who had been unable to go to a school to learn to read and write did what they could to survive under the most disadvantageous conditions, under the most difficult conditions. (Words indistinct) to live in a society it is first necessary to know what society one is going to prepare that man for. And logically, in a society where the law of the survival of the fittest, or of the most astute, or the smartest, is in effect, or a society where individualism, egoism prevails and it is very man for himself, you could not teach anyone to live. You can only hope to establish education for life in a society based on quite different foundations. You cannot preach about a sense of human fraternity where the indispensable condition for living is to take something form someone else, bother someone else, damn someone else. One can only develop a sense of human fraternity or human solidarity to the ultimate level in a society which has as a base and can only have as a base solidarity and fraternity among human beings, where human beings can help each other, where men join forces to create wealth, where men join forces to exploit the resources of nature: the land, the water; where men join forces to apply technology, to apply intelligence, to work the machinery, to achieve all this. All this, which looks beautiful, this school itself which is completed, beautifully completed and lighted, has required the efforts of many men, men who produce the cement in the cement plants, those who produce the steel, the efforts of the lumbermen, the transport workers, the efforts of the technicians, the roadbuilders, the efforts of the electricians. Man can create beautiful things, but we must ask how can he create them. Beautiful things such as this school, those nurseries, this road, park, restaurant, that store, the commercial center, the tobacco warehouse, projects such as those that will continue to be carried out, such as the hydraulic projects that will have to be completed here to supply water so that we will have irrigation, so that we will have bigger crops. Projects such as these, many of them of extraordinary benefit for everyone, can be carried out, but we must ask: how can this be done? They could not be done if it were not the united efforts of men. The revolution is seeking to see that the united efforts of men will create wealth, create marvels for men, that the creators of this wealth can create it for themselves, that the people create marvels, not for others but for themselves, and here in this project that we have before us is a good example of how the people can create marvels for themselves. (applause) Our workers, with their hands, with their vigor, their intelligence have created projects that will serve the welfare and happiness of many, projects that will serve to bring happiness and satisfaction to all because there will not be a single family in this valley of San Andres of Caiguanavo. Not one single family, which will not see something that has been done for all. (applause) There will not be a single family which will not have the happiness of seeing their children in one of these centers, of seeing them growing happily, of seeing them educated, but educated in a spirit of profound solidarity, fraternity, educated in that new concept (words indistinct). and that is the revolution, and that is what revolution means. This is what our revolution means, that all can benefit, that all can receive the fruits of their labor. This means that all receive the fruit of the labor of all. And when the first grains of coffee are harvested we will have to think of the women who carried the seed to the germinating beds, who transplanted the first seedlings out of the sun, who care for them. We must think of the Young Communists and the soldiers who planted them. We must think of the workers who have kept the plantation free of weeds. We must think of the efforts of many who created wealth for the many. Our watchword in a new society must be that of creating such wealth as the hands of man and his intelligence are capable of creating for the benefit of all. One must not even ask if one is going to partake of the coffee from the plant that one planted but rather that someone is going to partake of the coffee from that plant. And perhaps we will drink the coffee from the plant that someone else is planting. Or when we eat the bread that was made by someone else. We will work for ourselves. We will work for all, and we can create all that we are willing to crate, all that we have a need to create. These children will receive an extensive education. They will receive training and will learn to live, study, and work. These schools will not be schools such as those that we attended in the past by a minority of the children of rich families, children who did not have the slightest concept of work--why would they need to know about work?--and in that society the work was done by the poor, and in the society the rich did not know work, nor did they need to know work because others worked for them. The children will be educated in the concept of work from their earliest years. And if they are in the first grade and they are six years old, they will learn to raise something even if it is only a head of lettuce, and they will learn how a head of lettuce is raised, and they will likewise learn how beautiful it is to raise a head of lettuce. Perhaps they will learn how to water a small plant or they will learn how to water the garden, creating a (?happier) environment. They will do whatever they can. However, it will be necessary from the time that they begin to think to learn about and have an idea of how material goods are produced, how technology is applied to produce many material goods. They must being to get an idea that material goods do not fall from heaven, that they must be produced by working. And in addition they will acquire a most worthy idea of what work is, not as it was in the past when work was thought to be something to be despised, not work as a sacrifice but work as even being a pleasure, work as something pleasant, the most pleasant the most beautiful that man can and must do. Work must not even be thought of as a duty but as a moral need, a form of investing time worthily, usefully. For the rest, with the help of machinery and technology, man will free himself more and more every day from work in the sense of brute, physical effort. And here in San Andres itself where there are more--or there were more--than 1,000 oxen and all the land was prepare with yokes of oxen--what did this mean? It meant that every year the land had to be plowed, that hundreds of heads of families had to yoke up their teams very early, hook up the plow and walk behind the oxen plow and prepare the soil. And truly this is hard work when a man has to handle a plow behind a yoke of oxen. There are not two but three oxen plowing the land (applause) because the man has to make as a great an effort as either of the oxen. And that is the way our peasants had to do it in this valley, and many still have to do it still in many places, plow the land in this manner. When the 19 or 20 tractors--I do not remember how many--arrived here, this misery of having to plow the soil with oxen disappeared immediately. The need to have 1,000 oxen also disappeared. However, there is still some little work that must be done with oxen, particularly in tobacco, but no longer the work of plowing the soil. It is the work of doing some cultivation in tobacco with oxen. It is not so hard and is an insignificant amount compared to all the work that had to be done with them before tractors. There will be a surplus of almost 1,000 oxen because the peasants will be able to do that little bit of work with fewer oxen. Instead of oxen they can now keep cows, cows that will produce milk and meat on the same area in which the oxen grazed previously. They will work animals that could not be slaughtered and therefore could not produce meat, they will not produce milk. Therefore when machinery was introduced all the workers were relieved of that tremendous physical effort that they used to have to do every year. In addition, land is made available where they can keep hundreds of cows to produce thousands of liters of milk every day. Here all this plan of social development, of education development, will be accompanied by economic development. It will be accompanied by technical development, agricultural development. Therefore, in this same valley in coming years three, four, or five times more will be produced than was being produced previously. We should not have any fear that there will be a shortage of food for any of the children that are going to be attending the schools because here, in this same region, agricultural production will be three or four or five times greater. But it will not only be so here only. We hope that it will be that way throughout the country. The children and the young people will not only receive a good education in a magnificent installation but will also receive optimum nourishment. They will receive a balanced diet. They will eat a maximum of the foods that they need--fruit, milk, vegetables, all foods. We are also interested in seeing the effect that a hygienic, wholesome life will have on those children, the effects of physical education and sports, optimum nourishment. This means that all the children will receive clothing, shoes, and food in the school and institutions and they will receive it free, free. (applause) Is this fact perhaps something of little importance? No. This has much to do with a number of concepts. It has much to do with the general concept of the way in which we wish to build socialism, and of the way in which we wish to build communism. The landowners, the cortinas, the foreman, and the rural guard used to tell the peasant: "Socialism, that is terrible, communism, still more terrible. They want to communize everything. They even want to communize your wife." (laughter) The rural guards, the official thugs, the foremen, and the landowners used to say that, and yet they were precisely the ones who really wanted to communize women, as the Manifesto of Karl Marx said, because if they could they communized others: wives. If they were able, they communized the peasant's daughter; and if they could take his wife from him, they did so. They are the ones who tried to put those absurd ideas in the peasants' minds, those lies, those fantasies. Socialism and communism had nothing to do with the concept of women as property, as a working tool. The capitalists had that concept of women. What socialism had done with women is give them an opportunity to educate their children, an opportunity to work, to free them forever from the terrible necessity of having to become a prostitute some day to earn a living, or the necessity of working in rich people's homes as a means of livelihood. What it has done is to give women dignity and a place of honor in society. What it had done is concern itself with seeing that her children do not die of disease or starvation, that they do not remain in ignorance, without even learning to write their name. The landowners, the bourgeois, the official thugs, the foremen, the corrupt politicians invented a specter. After just a few years, how much the people have been able to learn, in order to answer: No. This was not what you used to say. It is this, that we are seeing today with our own eyes. (applause) It is these schools, the roads, or the hospitals; it is these children in uniform with a splendid future ahead of them; it is this joy. It is even the chance to see national champions playing in games here, playing for a championship, because formerly the people in the rural areas could not even see the ball players in their games. Everything was concentrated in the capital. Today you can enjoy that. You see the great concept. But how is progress made? How does one continue advancing along the road to socialism and communism, which is the course that offers society the greatest amount of happiness, the greatest amount of satisfaction, and the greatest amount of goods? There are persons who think, that if we give all these services free to the peasants now, the peasants will become lazy, they will become good for nothing, they will not work. Some believe that for man to have work, for man to work, he has to feel the whiplash of dire need, the whiplash of poverty, the whiplash of fear, so he will work. Revolutionary ideas will truly be put to the test in this program. It is true that in the past men worked spurred on by need, poverty, and fear. If you went to some peasant's house and asked him what he intended to do with the little pig, he would most likely have answered: "I am fattening him in case I become sick or somebody in my family becomes sick, to pay the doctor or buy medicine." The first thing he thought of when he was raising some animal was not of eating it, but of that terrible time when illness would knock on the door--and to be sure, it did knock on doors frequently enough--of not having to endure the anguish of having to go down hill--as they said here--carrying the wife or child in a litter, without a centave in his pocket, without knowing what doctor to see, or how in the dickens he was to pay for the medicine. So he worked with that time in mind. Others were thinking of some day buying shoes for their children, or (words indistinct). And above all, he worked, as the peasants and workers said, "to feed my children." What is the meaning of this answer always given by every worker and peasant when he was asked what he was working for? That worker and that peasant never said: I am working for myself, I am working to provide myself with clothes, shoes, food, to gratify myself. No. There was not one who could not answer: I am working to feed my children, to feed my family. What does that mean, I repeat? It means that historically, since man became man, man has worked basically to provide for his family, to keep his children and loved ones from starving. And that has perhaps been the force that has exerted the most pressure on man to make man work. Because some might not have minded so much going hungry but could not tolerate the idea of their children going hungry, and since the children were entirely dependent on the father's work, that sentiment induced men to put forth efforts, to work hard, sometimes making tremendous sacrifices. How many cases have we not known who were left widowed with three or four children, or five, and who made tremendous efforts, washing, ironing, to feed and educate them. We now find that today all of the children, all, will have their nursery with first-class food, clothing, and shoes or they will have their school. Suddenly, no worker and no peasant from this region will feel the pressure of having to work to feed his children. I would like to ask you, I want to ask the peasants, I want to ask Emilio and all who resemble Emilio, to ask Apolinar and all who resemble Apolinar--Apolinar has 23 children--23! He says that nine are attending school. I imagine that the rest of them are already men and women. I would like to ask them from the bottom of my heart: Do you workers and men--we are accustomed to working, men who love work--when this need disappears, when this need to raise a pig to pay the doctor and to pay for medicines has disappeared, when the need to have money to pay a teacher, to send the boy to town to study if possible, to send him to learn a trade has disappeared, when the need to buy clothing and shoes and the need to feed them disappears--when this happens, will the men and women of San Andres de Caiguanabo become lazy. Will they become loiterers? Will it be considered honorable, perhaps, for production to decrease here in San Andres de Caiguanabo? (Isolated "no's" from the crowd) Now that man no longer has this burden, now that our men and women no longer bear this anxiety, now that they no longer live under this uncertainty and this suffering, now that they have a doctor nearby and have transportation and do not have to haul a stretcher 28 kilometers, and schools and everything are available to liberate man from his suffering, from these fears and these pressures--will this spoil men? Or is it more logical to suppose that these conditions will make man more responsible? Will man work aimlessly or would it be perhaps more reasonable to believe that man would work with more enthusiasm and more joyfully? He will work less because money will no longer be as important to him, since he sought money primarily to keep his children from starving. Now that he is certain his children are no longer in danger of starving, money can be used for other things. Man will no longer need money for those things which formerly worried him. Will this cause the peasants of the San Andres de Caiguanabo valley to quit producing? (Few "no's" from the crowd after a moment of silence) How can we think that we will have less production if, alongside the nurseries, we will have machinery, technology, fertilizers, irrigation, a variety of better seeds, and (?better) breeds of cattle? How can we think that production will drop when, owing precisely to the machinery, we will no longer have to exert brute, rigorous efforts as before? How can we produce less when half of us working intensively can produce three or four times as much with machinery and technology? It is reasonable to think that San Andres de Caiguanabo will cease producing, or, rather, will produce less wealth, less food, and fewer products? On the contrary, it is possible to do all of this--to liberate the worker from this burden which formerly weighted on him, from those pressures which spurred him in the past--and simultaneously to produce three or four times more. What do we think? Do we think that under this plan San Andres will produce more? That under this plan and with technology, we will have more manpower? If women no longer have to cook to feed five or six children, if they do not have to remain beside a wooden tray washing clothes for all these children, how many hours do women devote to doing the children's laundry? Just figure it out. In Apolinar's case, just imagine. (Laughter from the audience) to have to wash clothing for 15 people at home--and using a wooden tray at that! Who has an electric machine that does this washing? A machine that irons? How many thousands of hours do women spend over the washboard. These hours she can devote to joining and aiding her husband in harvesting the tobacco, in gathering coffee, in any of the many activities which women can do magnificently. In addition, the older students, the students of the 300-internees institutions who are strong and who will be even stronger as a result of physical education and nourishment, will be able to participate in the coffee harvest. They will be able to participate in production by washing the machines when the wooden laundry tray is replaced by the washing machine, when the little pot over the family stove is replaced by these big caldrons with a food capacity for 100 or 200 persons. We will liberate the women from thousands upon thousands of hours of doing their kind of work. We will free still more manpower capable of accomplishing even more because of added technology. We will work with even more enthusiasm because now, everyone will have one more reason to work. Everyone will have one more thing to stimulate him to work. Everyone will feel a greater joy toward work. We do not think that production will decrease. We believe and we dare to affirm that under the plan which we are carrying out--the study of land parcel by land parcel--we produced in San Andres de Caiguanabo. (applause) The reactionaries mistrust man; they mistrust mankind. They think that a human being is still something of a beast--that he moves only under the lash of a whip. They think that man can perform noble things motivated merely by an egotistical interest. The revolutionary man has a much higher concept by man; he sees man not as a beast. He considers man capable of superior forms of life and superior forms of conduct, capable of being stimulated by superior motives. The revolutionary man believes in man; he believes in the human race. If one does not believe in a human being, then he is not a revolutionary. We will put these ideas to the test here, right here. Here in San Andres and in Banao and in a great land, throughout our entire homeland! These ideas are fighting it out throughout the world--these ideas which we can call revolutionary and reactionary. They have to do with ways of building socialism, of constructing communism. In many places, reactionary ideas are gaining strength and are making inroads. Faith in man is lost. In our land, revolutionary ideas gain strength. Faith in the human being grows. We who consider ourselves revolutionaries and expect confidently that we will not be our own judges, but that time will prove us right--we know and are conscious that in a world in which many reactionary ideas gather strength, even, hear this, under alleged revolutionary standards and even while flourishing Marxist-Leninist terminology, we move in holding revolutionary ideas high, not brandishing those ideas, but believing profoundly in them, believing profoundly in the human being, and we embark upon that course. There are doubtless many throughout the world who wish for our failure. There are doubtless many who prefer the failure of the more revolutionary persons to the confession that they themselves were not really revolutionaries. (applause) We will study man very deeply here; we will study very carefully the science of the training and education of man. Doubtless, these centers will be places in the world where even pedagogy will be tested. The existence or nonexistence of pedagogy will be tested. Whether society is or is not capable of educating its members will be tested--whether it is capable of awakening in men a better conscience and higher sentiments. That is why, all those who are interested in pedagogy will have to come here to San Andres to see what is happening in San Andres and how things are going to San Andres--how the minds and intelligence of those youths and those children are being trained and how they are being educated, not only receiving culture and instruction but also preparation for life. It is possible that never before has such a young group of professors and teachers shouldered such a great responsibility, such a sacred duty, because never before have certain ideas been tested under these circumstances. Never before has a group of revolutionary militants had the responsibility held by the party comrades in San Andres de Caiguanabo, because basic ideas are going to be tested here in the field of production. Never, perhaps, will a human community play the role in the field of revolutionary theory, revolutionary ideas, and revolutionary concepts to be played by this population, the men and women of this valley of San Andres de Caiguanabo, (applause) because basic ideas are going to be tested. The first thing to do when success is desired, when a goal is to be reached, is to have a clear idea of that goal--the mass method--to get the population to consider itself an army for that idea, to get each man, woman, teacher, youth, and child to consider himself the guardian of that idea, the standard bearer of that idea, the soldier of that idea. That is necessary when a great goal is to be achieved. (applause) And we who defend those ideas, believe in those ideas, and believe in the human being have no doubt about the results. We have no doubt that the correctness of our viewpoints will be proved and we do not expect any failure. We will carry out this new and revolutionary plan. Countless benefits will be received by all the children and, with them, the families. The means of oppression that forced men to be an ox and to work like an ox, will disappear from this community. However, man, ceasing to be an ox in order to be a man with labor becoming more suited to man, will produce three, four, five times more here than was produced in the past. Triumph here means we will triumph in the rest of the country. Triumph here will mean triumph in all the valleys of this province and triumph in all the rural areas of our fatherland, because men and women like you live in the rest of the country. Men and women like you live in the rural areas of Las Villas, Oriente, Camaguey, Matanzas, and Havana. If, following correct methods, awakening the enthusiasm of the families, working with the masses, awakening their conscience and enthusiasm, we triumph here, we will triumph throughout the island. If our ideas are victorious here, they will be victorious the length and breadth of the island. (applause) In the fullest sense of the word, you here today are the standard bearers, the vanguard. Men and women of San Andres de Caiguanabo, youths, girls: This plan being initiated today is that important. In your hands is the task of bringing the ideas involved in this plan to victory. In your hands is the banner. You are the vanguard, and the rest of your brothers, the workers of our rural areas, will be watching what happens here. We will all be attentive. We who are interested in man and in the human being, we who believe in the human being and who are interested in revolutionary ideas, who want a better life, a better society, a happier life for man--we shall be watching what happens here. And, absolutely certain that you are aware of this, I am not afraid to state that we will be successful; I am not afraid to state that our concepts and our ideas will triumph. Fatherland or death, we shall win! -END-