-DATE- 19690314 -YEAR- 1969 -DOCUMENT_TYPE- SPEECH -AUTHOR- F. CASTRO -HEADLINE- 12TH ANNIVERSARY OF ATTACK ON PRESIDENTIAL PALAC -PLACE- STEPS OF HAVANA UNIVERSITY -SOURCE- HAVANA DOMESTIC RADIO -REPORT_NBR- FBIS -REPORT_DATE- 19690314 -TEXT- Havana Domestic Radio and Television Services in Spanish 0124 GMT 14 Mar 69 F/C [Speech by Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro from the steps of Havana University at ceremonies marking the 12th anniversary of the attack on the Presidential Palace--live) [Text] Relatives of those who fell on 13 March, honored guests, students, workers: Some main topic has always concerned us on this historic date which brings us together on the university steps. This year we want to talk about a topic which cannot help but be important on this 13 March. We want to talk about the university. [applause] We do not pretend to present an exhaustive or definitive exposition on what university institutions should be in a revolutionary process because even our own ideas, our own concepts, are also developed along with the process and ideas enriched by daily experience. We all thought we had some ideas, more or less, about what a university should be in a revolutionary process, but actually the ideas all of us had were more or less vague. We talked about university reform as we talked about agrarian reform. In all we knew about university reforms, in all we know about agrarian reforms, in all we knew about every aspect of what the work of the revolution ought to be, were we to compare our experiences with our initial ideas, we would find that not exactly the same thing occurred in all fields. The agrarian revolution that developed in our country has practically nothing to do with the first underdeveloped ideas of what an agrarian reform ought to have been: A revolution which we called reform when we did not even understand that the land problem could not be resolved through reform, but rather through profoundly revolutionary changes. We had exactly the same situation in the university. It could not possibly have been otherwise, because the ideas of the initial period were draw from concepts molded in the bosom of the society in which we then lived, and in which there arose, as legitimate and important aspirations of our people, the demand for the implementation of a number of measures and changes which, within the framework of that society, were really practically impossible. The watchword of the agrarian reform could be considered a watchword within a revolution that should be reformed, or to put it more clearly, within a society that ought to be revolutionized. And when society is really revolutionized, then all those ideas that might have been considered reforms, conceived at a given time, become totally obsolete in terms of the real needs of a revolutionized society. We also want to say that this transformation of ideas regarding the university took some time. We must say that during the entire revolutionary process we could always count on the enthusiastic participation of the students. It is also proper to acknowledge with satisfaction that never in the bosom of the revolutionary process did there arise a single contradiction between the process and students. This has special political merit because we must say that the makeup of the university student body was heterogeneous. But even within this complex and heterogeneous character of the student mass, more can be said--that the majority of the student mass came from those sectors which were classically labeled as petit bourgeois within society. And in some cases, they were also bourgeois sectors. We must say that logically, a considerable part of this social atmosphere, the habits, the ideas, the customs, were formed by the students of the university. I mean by this that a notable change took place in the way of thinking and acting of that mass. And this is a good example of the importance of ideological and moral factors in the conduct of man, because this mass marched in step with the university and became more radical. And its convictions became more profound to the degree that the revolution became more profound, to the degree that the revolution became more radical. And we can today proclaim with satisfaction that in the order of ideas, of political positions, of attitudes, the students of our universities unquestionably occupy a vanguard position in the bosom of the revolutionary process. [applause] Yet, a vanguard position cannot in this case be only in the political field. It must be a vanguard position in the technical and scientific fields as well. It must be a vanguard position in the path that all society must one day follow. As you know, every idea always have some impact. New ideas, all new ideas always produce some waves. But new ideas are not always easily understood. Hence, when on occasion it has been asserted that some day the university will be universalized, these words, which are not some play on words or a riddle, and so forth, express an idea, and idea which not everyone accepts easily at first since they do not and cannot conceive that a university can become universal. They cannot conceive that university learning can be universalized, and that an entire people can reach the level of what we call university education. This is part of and stems from the overall concept, the overall picture we have always known. It stems from the old arrangement of the old society. It is the product of a society where knowledge was the heritage of an insignificant minority--the mastery of technique and science. And we do not know the large number of vices, of habits, engendering the condition that knowledge is the privilege of a minority. Nevertheless, it is hard to reconcile the concept of a revolution with the idea that there will be always within that society a minority possessing knowledge of science and technology and a majority ignorant of the same. In the first place, we cannot conceive how future problems can be solved if this knowledge is not universalized. In the second place, we cannot conceive how a communist society can come about without the universalization of scientific and technical knowledge. Some think that there will always have to be a part of society doing so-called menial work. Some think that there will always be some men doing intellectual work and only intellectual work, and another part of mankind doing menial work and only menial work. This work which requires long and interminable hours uses tremendous energy, physical energy, practically animal energy by man. The old work--the work which in practice made man a man, which lifted him from his primitive state to the extent that his work became gradually more intelligent--as that work becomes totally intelligent, totally preceded by intelligence, menial or animal work as such will disappear. That is why we can have no concept of a people's educational development that does not equate, in its final results, to the development of all a people's potential faculties, of all its potential intelligence. In the beginning the revolution began practically from scratch. It began struggling against illiteracy. After the battle against illiteracy, the battle of general learning, primary education for everyone, began. The problems it involved--of teachers and schools--were huge, and many of those problems still exist. Subsequently it was the struggle for six-grade education, which has also produced notable results in the number of workers in our country who have completed all their primary schooling and have gone beyond it. In the near future all the people will discuss the problem of general or compulsory education up to the preuniversity level. [applause] That is, not only to the sixth grade, not only to junior high school, but up to preuniversity level. The last leap will have to be a much more gradual one, that is, in stages. We are not saying that it will be a leap from the primary to the preuniversity level. It will take us a long time until we reach the final jump, which will be universal university learning. Indeed, it will not be a jump. It will be simply a result of the earlier jumps, because once learning up to the pre-university level becomes universal, the step to universalizing university education will flow normally. In a certain sense this is happening with thousands of students graduated by technological institutes, who attained the pre-university level, went into production, and are studying university subjects, taking their tests, practice, and examinations. Therefore this level has been reached despite difficulty today, as conditions for this type of study exist in a very few places in our country. Therefore, our next basic step will be to establish by the law of all the people, by the participation and understanding of all the people, universal education for all children and all youths of various ages through preuniversity. This will demand enormous effort for all of us. This will demand enormous effort of all the higher level students because we do not have and we will not have for many years other cadres, other teachers to begin to carry out this program, than the higher level students. And this is being done today on a sizeable scale. This will help resolve some contradictions--the contradiction between defense and studies. This is one of the patent contradictions in the revolutionary process. Let us say that there are three contradictions: The enormous necessity of development, the enormous necessity of the defense of the nation in the conditions in which our revolution is evolving, and the enormous necessity of study. We must overcome these contradictions. These contradictions must be solved. The contradiction between the necessities of underdevelopment and of study are resolved to the degree that work is combined with study. Work combined with study is developing today at the secondary, preuniversity, and university levels. However, it is developed to the extent of our possibilities. Today we have the school-plus-farmwork plan and in the future we will have schools in the farms. Rural secondary schools will be located in the farms. And soon we will begin to build the first rural secondary schools in the countryside. This will contribute to the solving of this contradiction. Therefore, the enormous mass of hundreds of thousands of youths who are taking secondary education will do so in institutions in which they will combine their studies with production activities of the type which is possible at that age. It will be the type of work they are able to do. The technological and preuniversity schools are participating today in the hardest job we have, the sugar harvest. There is no question but that a serious contradiction confronts us. In the face of the tremendous necessity for training technical cadres, three-or four-month periods have to be devoted to productive jobs as a basic necessity. This is logical because those who used to do that work in the past, that category which was part of the bottom rung the most exploited in our society, was the machetero who, between the sugar harvest season and the dead season not only did the most arduous jobs but was always the victim of the dead season of long month of layoffs, living in appalling conditions. Now this category no longer exists and never again will exist in our country. And we can in no way ever conceive of a society in which this kind of work always falls on a part of society. And logically the ranks of macheteros have not grown during these years. The ranks of the macheteros have been thinning out and this is because they have been leaving to operate machines, tractors, trucks and to perform a countless number of diverse activities. And since this process has been taking place much sooner than we have been able to resolve the sugarcane mechanization problem, it is logical that other sectors of society, among them the students, the soldiers, the industrial workers, everybody in fact, have had to participate to ever-increasing degrees in the sugarcane harvest. But it is also urgent and of utmost importance, it is of highest precedence in the revolution, to mechanize the canecutting process. This is one of the problems which at this time occupies the priority attention of the revolution. Logically, we cannot long permit a situation which forces such a vast employment of energy, of students, of workers from industry, because other branches of the natural economy, industry and construction, and other sectors demand the investment of such energies. Moreover, we believe that the type of activity in a sugarcane harvest is not the ideal type of activity for students within the framework of the scheme to couple study and work. In addition, we have the third necessity, that demanded by the defense of the nation against imperialism. This necessity forces us into the circumstances of employing a sizable mass of young men at the peak of their strength in the job of defending the nation, of training to defend the nation, of mounting guard in defense of the nation. We will therefore have to reconcile the problem of defense with the problem of studies and with the problem of production. We shall solve this problem by linking it with the phase of preuniversity education or technological education, as we will call it. In the future there will be no distinction between technological and preuniversity education. All schools will be technological schools, some of the type of technology and some of other technologies. Those who are in preuniversity schools today will be science-technology students, plus those in posttechnical studies. Hence, military training will be received in the technological education period, in other words, once secondary education is over. Secondary school will be a year longer. Part of the studies will be done in the technological school, in other words, 4 years. What for? Because many boys are admitted to secondary schools when they are too young, and we want some of the studies they are going to undertake in the later stages to be done in secondary school. Hence secondary school will be 4 years. They will be a year older when they are admitted, but they will also get a year more of study in the later phase. In other words, in the technological schools. Once in the technological schools, they will take the proper courses and they will also receive military training there and they will also be part of the mass of our revolutionary armed forces. Therefore, some day in that phase, studies, military training, and productive work will be done, but in another ratio. In other words, with a different intensity. It cannot be 3 consecutive months, because time will have to be divided among studies, military instruction, and a shorter time than in the past will be spent in productive work--as training rather than a necessity. We expect that by that stage we will have solved the most serious problem, that of total mechanization of canecutting, to the extent that with machines, chemistry, and constantly increasing productivity of work, this tremendous constant need which we have now will not arise. And at a given time the work being done by these technological students will have much more importance as a part of training, rather than an essential need of the country. Thus these ideas contain the criteria which guide us toward overcoming the contradictions I mentioned earlier. But these contradictions must be overcome with the participation of all the people, and with the support of all the people. The problem of the huge number of repeaters in school, the problem of a comparatively large number of boys and girls who do not attend school--these problems must be totally overcome, and they must be totally overcome with the active participation of the people. [applause] We do not think three is a single conscious citizen in this country who thinks it possible to admit that this society will accept illiterates in the future, that this society will accept ignorant persons in the future. What will be the maladjustments, and what will be the problems of those individuals who, compared with a mass with greater and greater knowledge, remain backward and ignorant of everything. In the future there will not be a single productive process or service in the country which will not require a considerable degree of knowledge. Among other things, aside from the problems of an individual who is left behind, like an island of ignorance in the midst of a people growing in knowledge, there are problems arising from the uselessness of an uneducated person, who will be a burden, a problem in the future for all society. We must learn to see things in perspective, and understand that is is everyone's task to fight tenaciously, decisively against all these shortcomings, all these possibilities which still exist that a child does not go to school. They will become society's problems, candidates for delinquency, for conflict with the society they cannot adapt to, and in which they can scarcely live. Society still has a long struggle against these faults, these vices, the vice of delinquency which still exists and will remain for a long time. A parasite from the past, a milestone from the past, it feeds on the ranks of all those youngsters without preparation, without knowledge, culture, or consciousness. There are also cases of individuals who use minors for criminal purposes. Since the law punishes robbery with a certain severity, they resort to using minors criminally. The very concept of minors is elastic. It is a sketchy one and some of these concepts will have to be revised. If we consider age 16 old enough to serve in the fatherland's armed forces, protect it, and die for it, why de we not consider them answerable for robbery or other criminal activity of any kind [applause] at age 16, 17, or 18? Evidently this is an old concept, and the revolution must analyze it so that society will face this type of problem. There are habitual offenders in society; there are some who are incorrigible, who because of their record, their inveterate habits, are incapable of adapting to normal living--incorrigible, unrehabilitated, and some on whom prison life has a negative and dismal influence. Our country will have to study the whole problem of its penal institutions for common delinquency, since in recent years the idea of struggle against counterrevolutionary delinquency was uppermost--persons who acted against the revolution. The other struggle was somewhat behind. In principle, our society believes and feels the need to give every man a change and every chance, but it will also have to face those virtually unsolvable situations, cases of incurable criminals, including those in prison who continued to commit evil deeds, who continued on occasion to commit murder and extend their imprisonment. There is a whole world worthy of sociological study for society to determine what to do with this class of incorrigible individuals and with the habitual offenders. We may have to face the need of eliminating them radically. [applause] It is true that we have individuals who take up this life and practically no method exists to correct them. And some of them even take advantage of that type of impunity after they are penalized in order to continue their criminal activities. The struggle against crime will have to be a basic task of society. But we must keep very much in mind and we must be fully aware that this struggle will be all the easier, all the less necessary, from the moment the nation is able to master the problem of education from a very early age and from the moment it can establish the conditions enabling every individual to receive a complete education. We do not conceive that this type of delinquent can be engendered in a society that has achieved that aim. And though it is never possible to predict what the isolated behavior of some men will be, because science will have to speak its piece in that field too, because scientific explanations will have to be sought for those problems in that field also, it is unquestionable that the problem of delinquency will be considerable reduced to the degree that education is generalized and with it, culture, and with culture, the conscience of all society. Of course, these problems are important, but there is an even more important problem in our judgment. It is something to which little attention has been given before--how is it possible to build communism without universal education. Not just from the production point of view now, not just from the technological point of view now, but from the point of view of man's attitude toward work. Moral factors have often been discussed, the moral factors that move men, the moral motivations. Evidently it has been set forth almost as a problem of conscience. Actually, there is also another facet to this moral problem. It is not as though we see work as something unpleasant for which a moral effort is needed to do it, for which conscience is needed to do it. If we speak about conscience, about moral motivation only in that sense, it would be a narrow point of view. Duty, work cannot be placed in the framework of the old concept in which duty was viewed as sacrifice. We must place it within a new concept just as work. It is certainly admirable to see the great possibilities in the offing that men may find in work itself, one of there greatest incentives. Yet, the motivation for this work is not produced, or if you like, is produced in direct proportion to the level of knowledge, of the level of culture. It is less with a lower level of culture. We have had a chance to see this ever-increasingly in the past few year. How in the nature of work, above all in the nature of technical work, in the nature of scientific work, in work that is directed by intelligence, one finds one of the deepest motivations of man. And we have observed that this occurs to the same degree that the level of certain activities increase. We have especially seen it in the university students. We have seen how entire groups are dedicated to certain activities with a feverish spirit. And it is no longer work being done with a sense of duty alone, with a sense of need, but rather of work which is done with pleasure, work which of itself stirs up enormous interest, work which of itself becomes one of the most pleasant of man's activities. And if we want all men to work some day with that spirit it will not suffice to have a sense of duty, it will not suffice to have moral motivation, it will be necessary for the nature of the work, directed by man's intelligence, for the marvelous nature of the work to be one of the basic motivations. And this will be possible to the degree that all society is capable of assimilating that nature, of mastering it, and of discovering it. We have seen it countless times, in any workplace where the work is routine, rudimentary, when a single fact is not needed, when no type of technology has to be applied, activity becomes routine. And to the same degree that technology has to be applied, that data has to be used, that controls have to be used, that daily observations have to be made of a number of the consequences of what is done, there is awakened interest and enthusiasm among the workers. There are even workers who do not have a very high level [of preparation] and who begin to acquire that level and this often occurs among students. Tonight, certain remarks were made regarding study as a necessity and a duty. Actually, we should talk to the students about study as a pleasure. Logically, that could not have been said 15 years ago in a university. What was a university in the past? We have often defined that university as a kindergarten for adults. Actually, most of us who went to those universities went because we were sent to those universities and because they could [afford] to send us to those universities. What was the content, what was the objective, and who was going to be easily led to believe that study under such conditions was a pleasure? At best it was a great need, for some persons, to solve an individual problem. And the fact is that the majority of the students at that time sought ways of studying the least bit possible and having the most fun. Anything was fine except studying. And all of us, one way or another--there may be some honorable exceptions, and I see here some comrades who possibly were at the top of their classes, though unfortunately I cannot count myself among them--but I actually recall how everything, all the atmosphere, was in that university which, when we compare it with the university of today, above all with the ideas of what a university can and should be, there is no possible comparison. Yet life compels us to study constantly; reality forces us to study all our life. Henceforth, there will be no one, none of you, who will be compelled by reality to study a lifetime. For you will anyway, and you will do it with even greater pleasure when you realize the need for it, when you see and grasp that nothing else will be possible, that there is no other choice. Recently, an eminent scientist, one whom for political reasons was imprisoned in the United States for a number of years, said on leaving prison that he would naturally have to begin studying again. This is because anyone who ceases to study any scientific field, who does not study because he does not want to or cannot, will find, in a period of 15 years, due to the impressive strides in modern-day science, that he is virtually ignorant of 90 percent of the most important knowledge. By the same token, whoever fails to study for 10 years after graduating from university will find that at the end of that time he is practical an ignoramus in his field. He might of course possess the practice, the daily mechanics, but with little chance of development if he does not simultaneously develop the theories. Thus there will be no one, none of you who can escape or even want to escape studying all your life. Every member of the society must do this. Moreover, you will have much more time for this, for in the same measure that man masters technology and applies it to productive processes and increases the productivity of work, in the same measure that all society participates in the productive processes, each component element of that society will have much more time for recreating-type activities, cultural activities, and intellectual activities. Thus those ideas which were mentioned, those ideas which were the essence of Marxist thought: The combining of study and work, the combination of intellectual and manual labor, are not simple phrases but ideas embodying the essence of the society of the future. Another phenomenon that has been observed is that intellectual work and only intellectual work becomes a painful task for man, and how the possibility given many persons who had always performed intellectual task to perform some manual-type work provided a great number of them with a kind of freedom, a kind of pleasure, and this despite the fact that some of the activities were hard manual labor to which many were unaccustomed. Such work like canecutting, we said before, will no longer arise in the future, though there will be other manual, manual-mechanical, or some other kind of work. However, they will go from intellectual work to working with machines, working with equipment, or some other kind of work. These are the premises of the idea that learning, even university learning, must become universalized. Also recalled by the comrade who spoke in the name of the students, were the activities the university is carrying out now. It is forthright to acknowledge, with pleasure, that a great qualitative change has been effected in the university. That qualitative change has been directly related to the university's being incorporated into the principal tasks of the country, the development activities of the country. This is being done more and more, yet it is not only the university which has profited qualitative, for the activities in which the students have been taking part have also profited qualitatively. One of the greatest lacks in our country at this stage is the lack of technical levels, the lack of knowledge. Among the people there is much more potential energy now being developed, and energy yet to be discovered, potential knowledge, potential intelligence already developed. This does not mean that there is no more intelligence in the brains of our fellow citizens; but knowledge is lacking. The level of knowledge among the cadres is really still very low. You would be surprised at the number of important work centers that are administrated by comrades who have completed the sixth grade, high school, and an exceptional few with preuniversity students, and almost none, almost none with university preparation. The fact that thousands of productive centers where hundreds of thousands of persons work are in most cases managed by persons with a really low level of knowledge presents a great problem for the country. Of course, in many cases these persons are wide awake, intelligent, pursue a great vocation; but this, unfortunately, is not enough. It will be more and more necessary and the country should expect that the cadres participating in activities have a high level of technical preparation. This implies, of course, the duty of all cadres to find some time for studies and for improvement. But the problems that derive from this are tremendous problems. And in this phase, in which the level of knowledge in productive processes is so scarce, large numbers of professors and students concentrated in the university possess knowledge in many matters that are fundamental for the development of the country. There are some activities, such as that of the doctors, in which it has become customary that they serve in specific hospitals, and at the same time in many hospitals teaching is practiced. No one could conceive of the existence of a hospital without doctors. We are totally accustomed to this idea. And it would seem horrible to us should there be a hospital without doctors. However, it seems almost natural to us that there be a sugar central of half a million arrobas of cane daily, or of one million, without even one engineer, without one economist. It has almost become natural to us that there be large factories, large productive units in agriculture, and many branches of industry without even the minimum of qualified technical personnel, without any university-level technicians or a small number of such technicians. Mention has been made here of the participation of students in the Havana Province road plan. Sometimes we imagine that highways can be built without civil engineers, that a bridge can be built without the participation of an engineer, or that a building can be constructed without the participation of an architect. Actually, this has happened many times. For this reason, when engineering students lend a hand in this field, the results are visible, the results are obvious, the help is of extraordinary value. At this very moment in the country there are more than 100 roads and highways. How many engineers do we have at the head of these roads and of these highways? Innumerable cane, cattle, and other agricultural activities pans--how many agronomists do we have at the head of those plans? Today it is necessary to use a technician, a group of technicians, to the maximum. It is necessary to work on the basis of general instructions, norms of a general nature, norms of fertilization of a general nature. The day will come when each of these activities must be carried out on the basis of specific norms--each specific place with a perfect knowledge of the soil. Students of the schools of biology, chemistry, architecture, hydraulics, economy, and engineering have been cooperating in the development of the coffee plan in the south of Havana Province. In these laboratories, which have been established in the vicinity of the university, tens of thousands of soil analyses are being made for one plan alone, tens of thousands of analyses for one plan alone. We have seen students early in the morning working hard on these soil analyses with the cooperation, or under the leadership of their professors. Some day, we will have to know all the soil of the country with minute exactness. They ware gathering all information. They are pointing out where there is more or less phosphorus, more or less potassium, more or less organic material, in the same way that students of biology have been examining the soil from the biological point of view--what type microorganism, what type nematode there is that may affect a specific kind of plant. The microbiology of the soil, the nutrients of the soil, the depth of the soil, the texture of the soil, all these indispensable elements are being examined there. As a result, possibly no other plantation of this kind in any part of the world has achieved even half of this technical level. We will have a plantation of this type equalled by no other in any other country. Hydraulic engineers, civil engineers, planning experts, and everybody else have cooperated. This plan at time brought together what could almost be called a council of scientists. They have discussed for many hours the position of the windbreak, points where irrigation canals should pass, the distance that specific sprayers can spray, and the innumerable technical problems that only a group of trained persons can resolve to give form to a plan. They have been cooperating in their plans in the Ceiba zone. They are cooperating in south Matanza in the Jaguey Grande zone, and there we are thinking of concentrating a large portion of our comrades and of these technicians. That is to say, the technical university support in the agriculture field will be quite evident in south Matanzas in the citrus plan, a very serious plan which calls for a great amount of soil cultivation because there are times when the soil is full of rocks and stones that must be removed in order to allow workers to work easier. The south Matanzas plan will have some 5,000 caballerias of citrus fruits; there is nothing similar in any other country. The same groups, olivadentes--the same as they call the rector of the university--because it includes economists, agricultural engineers, civil engineers, hydraulic engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, biologists, and a lot more, will move from Havana toward the south Matanzas zone. We hope that the comrades--those working on the Cienfuegos road, who are working in the construction of that road, will speed up construction to facilitate traffic between Havana and South Matanzas. These problems are your responsibility. They [The technicians] are going to cooperate in the Guanes plan; they have been cooperating in the Isle of Pines plan and many other plans. All of the many important new activities in which the university students are participating more and more every day concern us. We asked the comrade rector how are the reserves of university technicians, of professors and students, because there are so many activities that sometimes we are afraid that our reserves may become exhausted. But fortunately there seem to be an ample number of university students, and besides we are already seeing the results of the policy which prevents the contracting of students to work as professionals while still students. That is why we now can count on tens and on some occasions hundreds of students to take care of some of these tasks, because before there existed a vicious practice or the bureaucratic trick of trying to employ the first year chemical student or biology or engineering student so he would be under their control upon graduation. Luckily, we have been eliminating that practice. The students will participate, they will provide any type of support as a member of the university. They will go to work wherever the needs of the country demand it and not where they most skillful manager or the capable minister or vice minister had sent him because the student may have been superior to the rest of the students. That is not the way to correctly solve the problem, that is the easy manner of resolving problems and they will never find solutions to any problems. Thanks to that there is a GRANMA, thanks to that many services can be rendered. The university next year, in the 1970 harvest, will have a great task. The technology students will go, during the 10 million harvest, to Camaguey Province [applause] to work and to lend their technical support at the collection centers and in the sugar refiners. [applause] Other colleagues will go and work during that period in their activities, those in civil engineering and architecture will have tens of thousands of kilometers of trails, roads, firelanes and the woods for mapping [as heard]; those in architecture have a lot of physical planning to take care of, many industrial service installations and housing to build, and many other projects to take care of. The same for the biology comrades, they are counting all the pine woods in Pinar del Rio, 14,000 caballerias of pine woods where they select the plus pines, female pines, and plus male pines. Plus pines seems to be a special category of pines by virtue of which they are considered as the best in the species and from where the seeds for genetic work should be obtained from the reforestation purposes. The effort made by the biology students in this activity is commendable, how they have spent the hours in those mountains, working the entire week and collecting important data for the country and sometimes living under very rough conditions; The experience of the political science students in the Camilo Cienfuegos Sugar Refinery is also very interesting because there, at a labor center with all the various types of problems, is where theory is perfected, is where knowledge for the essential and the fundamental things is also perfected. It is difficult to think of a political cadre or a specialist in sociological or political matters who ignore the productive process and who ignores the conditions under which the work of the human masses unfolds. We are sure that it will give them an extraordinary experience. In our opinion, the country will greatly benefit; it will likewise profit from the quality of the technicians who will emerge from our universities trained in that type of activity. What we are striving for, as far as possible, is to provide the means to the university for carrying out those activities. And we acknowledge that those means are not enough. Nonetheless, the enthusiasm with which the university has undertaken all those missions and the success being achieved through that work encourages the country to exert an effort toward affording the university the means it needs for this task. Another new project is that of the 30 students currently being trained as specialists in engineering for terracing hills in Cayajabo, in Pinar del Rio Province. For they have their university there, virtually in tents. They work there and hold their classes, receiving their training there. That constitutes a fine example of a university that begins to transfer itself from its own site. The 30 architecture students in the agricultural command post in Havana Province who are training as specialists in physical planning also have their university there. They hold their classes and are being trained there. Thus these first experiments of a university's physically transferring itself from its traditional site and converting a project in the mountains into a university classroom and converting the classes of physical planning of an agricultural directorate into a classroom of the architecture school are examples of how it will be possible in the future--insofar as we have more professors, and insofar as we have qualified personnel where they belong--to go ahead and establish university classrooms in every working center. These examples point up the process by which the present university will disappear, to become an institution, a type of teaching which will be done in every working center. The day will come when we clearly realize that there could be no better place, say in the ultramodern nitrogen plant now being built in Cienfuegos, for training the chemical technicians specializing in that work, specializing in the production of fertilizers. The country already has splendid industrial thermoelectric plants; it is building very modern plants for producing fertilizers. And thus all this industrial development will provide future university classrooms. The middle-level technicians will go there and have their university there. By means of this process the day will gradually come when each farming base, each sugarcane plan, each cattleraising center, each forestry plan, will be a kind of agronomical school where all who work in those activities will receive their advanced studies, once compulsory universal education up to the preuniversity level is established. Once this is done, entire generations will enter production with that (education--ed.) level, and whole generations will proceed to receive advanced courses in their working centers. Furthermore, if hundreds of thousands are to study, it will be impossible for them to do so in universities. The old idea, the classic university, will vanish as such, it will vanish as such a concept, it will vanish as the institution which belongs to a clearly outdated society. Thus production itself, the productive activities, the productive processes, will constitute the material base, the laboratory wherein all workers will receive their higher learning in the future. That is how we see, how we conceive the development of higher learning institutions in the process of our revolution. And let it not be forgotten that some day the progress of this revolution will only be able to be gauged by the, it will not be, by the growth of our agriculture, which will be tremendous; [as heard] it will not be by the yearly growth of our industrial production. The measure by which this process can make gains will be provided by the percentage of youths engaged in higher learning, it will be provided by the percentage of the sum total of the persons in this country who are carrying on those studies. And that will be the yardstick, the most important and legitimate measure of how much this country progresses, because everything else, every other advance we make in the future shall be a byproduct of what gains our country will be able to make on the path of study, the path of mastering technology and science. These facts are evident. Perhaps we might lack will, perhaps we will lack energy, perhaps we will lack clear insight to aspire to go so far. But we do not believe so. We do not believe that if our people have come this far, if our people have surmounted difficult phases; if our people today face up to their present problems, with a virtually great shortage, technical, a great shortage of cadres; if our people are waging the most difficult battle in these present months; if our people are confronting the most typing phase to win the battle against underdevelopment; and if amid difficulties they are successfully standing steadfastly, the task of attaining these goals we are talking of tonight will be no more difficult. But, in addition, the university will not be connected only with the productive process, it must be connected with research. And the universities should be centers for all kinds of research. This university already has a research center near the basic medical sciences school where very serious projects are being carried out. This university already has a number of task in the fields of agriculture, economy, and other activities assigned to it. We believe that if the best professors are assembled in the university, if it is our duty to try to assemble the best trained personnel in the educational centers--for these are the ones who will mold the new generations of technicians--their knowledge should be used in research, just as research should form part of the future technicians' training. What we man is that professors should conduct research, and that research should be included in the training of future technicians. It is necessary to proceed forthrightly in this sense. Our country cannot afford the luxury of doing otherwise. If we have only a little, we must know how to use it. We must use it rationally. And we must progress in research. At this time the university is training postgraduate students for certain agricultural-type research centers that will be developed in the near future. In this respect it is heartening that a large number of university students will provide the bulk of those working in those research centers. In research, our country should do two things: gather information on everything that is being done elsewhere--we should not invent again what has already been invented; and, at the same time, conduct concrete research into what we concretely need to solve given problems. [We should] adapt the results of research in other countries to the conditions in our country. The revolution will definitely advance to the maximum in the field of research. This is another fundamental idea which we must not forget for a single instant. This is how our university will continue developing. This is how the concepts that the university will be universalized and cease being what it is now will continue to be developed. What then will these centers become? What shall we do with them? Naturally, this tremendous activity of higher studies must be directed. Post graduate studies will be conducted in the future. In other words, we will proceed to a superior level. For when we have tens and hundreds of thousands of technicians, then thousands of these will take postgraduate courses annually like some courses given last year. Some will be one year, some even longer. But these will not be known as university studies. They will be studies of another kind, postgraduate students. And the group of persons attending these courses or the student body will not be called such [university students]. Many of you may possibly attend these courses as high-level graduates. As when we referred to technicians, here is a candidate who is asking for information, and he is so doing because he know that we are recruiting cadres and students to be made cadres in nuclear physics research and to get nuclear physics professors. The Institute of Nuclear Physics has been established and we have asked for maximum support from the university in selecting from the nuclear physics students a grouped from which we may get our professors of nuclear physics and form the research cadres of the Nuclear Physics Institute which was recently created. In some colleges, we have a limited number of personnel, and that is why we have to split their tasks. Sometimes you receive and sometime you must give, and in this case, we must give. They are few and we know that it will limit the development of this institution. In the future, they will be fine physics students; they will study here and everywhere. There will be groups in many places. The university must aspire to develop itself to the fullest in all fields, and all the other universities must do the same, maybe more in some fields than in others. Our problems of today are the result of our poverty and our needs--which in some cases we count in tens and in other cases in hundreds. The doctors have made a valuable contribution tot he research technicians course in veterinary science. So the doctors, on the right track and ahead of diseases, are going to make a valuable contribution in animal health, which will in turn be very important for human health. There is a large number of students graduating, and close to 70 students are receiving a two-year course at the National Scientific Research Center which will prepare them for work at another research center which is being built. But the most important thing is not the building or the equipment, it is the student. Since we are on this subject, it is necessary to speak about a typical defect of technicians, of scientists, of researchers, and of the capitalist society. If someone feels we are talking about him, he can always think instead that we are referring to capitalist society. Something has been handed down from that society like a vice that accompanies that activity, which was a minority activity. When in a society only one person knows anything in a little--town there is only one doctor, only one engineer, one person who has specific knowledge, he occupies a privileged position, morally, socially, economically. And, logically, that situation created the traits of professional jealousy, pride, vanity, superiority complex, and one and only. And we must painfully accept that it will be necessary to struggle for a long time to allow the most important virtue, the most essential virtue, the first virtue of a technician, a scientist to be imposed. That virtue should be modesty. And remember this always--modesty. How many human relations are poisoned, how much cooperation is made impossible, how much gossiping, how much newsmongering, how many contradictions have resulted from the fact that man has not yet been sufficiently able to control that primitive spirit that he carries with him, the egotistic spirit, that individualistic spirit, that superiority complex? How much must we struggle to control even forms of expression, to instill in man that what is important is the task, the accomplishments, the content of what is done, regardless of whether or not his merits are recognized, whether or not he is given credit for originating an idea or an investigation. If everyone is going to increase their knowledge, it will be necessary to learn to live modestly, to learn to think and work and act modestly, without anyone feeling superior to others. Man has always been able to reap what men of though have created throughout history. He who does the most, who contributes the most, is insignificant basic all the knowledge and ideas that he inherited, and which served him, at a specific moment, as instruments to make what is called a contribution. Sometimes relations are poisoned because of professional jealousy and immodesty, because of these small bourgeois vices that, unfortunately, still exist. And if anything needs saying, needs urging, as part of the formation of our future technicians, that thing is the struggle against immodesty, that struggle against vanity, that struggle against individualism. And we shall always measure a technician, a scientist, not by his knowledge, but by the degree of humility and modesty with which he is able to contribute his knowledge to mankind. This is important, and our experience has taught us so. We must say--and this is why we were saying so--that it is a vice that comes down to us from the old society against which we must fight as we prepare our new generations. We must be able to wipe it out. These are some thoughts on how we regard the university at this time, how we see a university revolution. And this university, which is called the University of Havana, should be called the University of the West. We have a university of the east, one of the center, and that of Havana, which should be the University of the West. It could be called something else. What I mean is that it should be conceived of as that of the west. (applause) It exercises its activities in the Isle of Pines, in Pinar del Rio, in Matanzas, and in other provinces, because above being the university of the west, it is the university of the revolution, the university of Cuba. (applause) We must prepare ourselves--we are in the year of decisive effort; but we must prepare ourselves above all to invest our effort in a correct way, in a useful way. We must, therefore, prepare on time the participation of the university in the 1970 sugarcane harvest. The 1970 harvest goes well in one sense--in the plans for planting cane. All of the basic material for the 1970 harvest is being ensured. The season is favorable in some areas--relatively dry, or, let us say, without using "relatively," very dry in Oriente Province. However, most of the hydraulic work is being done in Oriente Province. And this province will receive the reinforcement of the necessary equipment for irrigation. If nature discriminates against Oriente Province, the revolution will make Oriente a priority in the provision of irrigation equipment and in an effort to provide the water that nature denies it. So, drought in Oriente will be compensated by such an effort. Hard work is being done on hydraulic projects throughout the island so that we may be able to face a drought. But there is a difficulty still in connection with the present harvest. This harvest has not yet reached the desired rhythm. And this is not a mobilization problem. No one believes more mobilization will be necessary. It is a matter of organization, of organization. (applause) This shows up our weakness in this field. It is true that simultaneously with the harvest we are fulfilling our program of planting, fertilizing, and weeding, which requires energy, time, attention, and which must be done. It is true that the effort devoted to road construction, hydraulic projects, and drainage is gigantic and uses up much energy and time. It is true also that throughout the spring, trucks and hoisters were used in planting. But it is also true that we are still weak, that we still have weaknesses in our organization. Ignorance in many places is reflected in the organization of transportation, in the organization of collection centers, in the organization of cane cutting, in the organization of industries. In all this organizing weaknesses are reflected. And during the coming weeks, our country should make a special effort in these areas of organization. At a moment when the sugar price is satisfactory, at a time when our country is approaching a great achievement in its work, we cannot permit one single cane fit for grinding in 1969 to be left uncut. [applause] Always, every year, when the rain starts, at the end, excuses are heard--too much rain, too many problems. It is the intent of the revolution this year not to order the end of the harvest until every can is cut in every province of the country. [applause] It is not a matter of saying that some of the cane can be cut in the succeeding harvest, which could begin earlier. This is a matter of commitments by the country regarding the sugar it must export. It has to do with the needs of the country. Its our duty to win the battle of 1970, but it is basically our obligation also to win the battle of the 1969 harvest. If the 1969 harvest is to prepare the ground for the 1970 harvest, then it will. If we must grind cane in June, we will grind in June; and if we must grind in July and August, we will grind in July and August. [applause] And our cadres, our parties, will have to learn to fight and win simultaneous battles, and they will have to learn to put into effect simultaneous plans--sugar cane, livestock, the 1969 harvest, the 1970 harvest, the rice program, and all the other plans. It is necessary to learn to win simultaneous battles. The people have the ability and disposition. There is enthusiasm. We must contribute what is missing, that is, common sense, organization. We must improve ourselves. We were saying that we have many limitations, but we must learn to overcome them. The will of the revolution, the will of the people, continues to be to wage and win the battle completely. The lag in the harvest implies that it will continue through May and June, while the new plants will be undergoing cleaning and sprouts will be fertilized and cultivated. A tremendous mixture of activity in a limited period of time. Unfortunately, this results in us getting behind schedule, and extends the tense pace of work in the six-month period beyond May, beyond June. We must face up to this situation and solve it, above all because this harvest is the forerunner--this year's work will produce the first great results of 1970. The development of our sugar production has tremendous importance as a source of foreign currency for the country with which to acquire the necessities for our development. It has great bearing on the standard of living of our people, on our cattle industry. Next year, we shall have 1 million more tons of molasses for our cattle. In other words we will have the necessary syrup to greatly improve our cattle feed. This harvest, therefore means much this year, and the harvest of 10 million tons means very much to our country and our people. We have called this a year of decisive effort, and it is truly one of decisive effort. But this effort must be invested very rationally. We must invest it intelligently. This is the situation at this moment. Certainly, we advanced much during this this year. In conclusion, we must say that in today's struggle we have the great honor of having at our side the worthy mother of those heroic Bolivian revolutionaries Coco Paredo and Inti Peredo. [applause] The applause of the people better expresses our sentiments of support for the solidarity with the cause of the Bolivian people, the cause of their sons, which is also the cause of our people. We also have as usual the representatives of the heroic Vietnamese people, [applause] symbol of the determined struggle for freedom. The Vietnamese people have always had our unconditional support, and in these moments their watchword, revolutionary and historic watchword, is that a peaceful solution in Vietnam depends on the withdrawal of the Yankee and puppet troops from that country. [long applause] They have all our support and the backing of our country. Fatherland or death, we will win! -END-