-DATE-
19880101
-YEAR-
1988
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
SPEECH
-AUTHOR-
F. CASTRO
-HEADLINE-
CASTRO SPEECH AT CHILD CARE CENTER TAKE 7 OF 11
-PLACE-
HAVANA
-SOURCE-
HAVANA DOMESTIC SPANISH
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS
-REPORT_DATE-
19880101
-TEXT-
REF FL062158 HAVANA DOMESTIC SPANISH 310118///MAXIMUM PRODUCTIVITY LEVEL.

Take 7 of 11--Cuba:  Castro Speech at Child Care Center

fl070057

[Text] While Comrade Chavez was giving his excellent speech, I was
paying particular attention to all the data and figures.  He gave us an
impressive account of the projects in which the mini-brigade workers are
participating.  The number of projects is incredible.  He mentioned 613
house-offices for the family doctor.  Even a few more have been built.
Yesterday in Regla, Maximo [not further identified--FBIS] was explaining
that it was 615 house-offices, as a few more new ones have been built.  The
mini-brigades are participating in the construction of the polyclinics what
we should finish the next year.  They are participating in the
construction of special schools, in the 28 bakeries that we must complete
by next year, and in hundreds of apartment buildings, in hospital and
cultural projects.

He even talked to us about the largest project on which they are
working.  That is the national science and technology exhibit center.  This
is a colossal project.  There you'll find 500 mini-brigade members working
with the cooperation of other organizations.  They say that an additional
1,000 members will be taken there.

The list is impressive.  I think in January we will be working on
approximately 1,500 projects.  What will next year's inaugurations be like?
Well, I cannot imagine.  Yesterday, I realized the commitment I made and
the work I had gotten myself into when I said that I would participate in
at lest one center in each municipality.  Well, I said in each
municipality, and this is already the fifth municipality and I have kept my
word, my promise.  However, I participated in many more centers in than I
had imagined.  With this one, it will be 26 centers in which I have
participated.  I have ended up being an expert in child care centers.
[Laughter] What I have learned with these children is amazing.  I am
amazed.  It is as if all of us, including our people, were discovering
children.

There are two sectors of our society that we are discovering these
days.  They are the two extreme sectors:  children and grandparents.
[applause]  Children and grandparents constitute for all of us..[changes
thought]  We had ideas about them, we had been in a few centers.  But
only after having to meet 26 times with 26 different collectives of
children and their teachers in 26 centers, can you have an idea of the
intelligence, quality, knowledge, and sharpness of those children.  It is
something encouraging.  So much so, that one would want to keep building
centers.  I think that is what has happened to you.  It is, well, enough to
feel really motivated.  It is as if wishing that maybe someday this will
not only be for the children of working mothers but, for all the children
of the country so they can go to that university of children, that factory
of intelligence which are the child care centers.  If someday all the
children of the country were to go through these institutions, no one
would be capable of conceiving what the future generations would be like.
No one would be able to imagine it.  This would be so especially if we
seize the science of educating and developing children's intelligence.  I
was saying yesterday in Regla that children already arrive with a certain
education and a certain level of intelligence to the universities.
Knowledge is now developed at the universities, not intelligence.  It is at
the centers where intelligence is developed.  Thus their great importance
and the reason why I say today what that we do out of necessity and to help
the working mothers, we should do someday for all the children,
independently.  Let the children have the opportunity and possibility
independently of the fact that  they might have an aunt who can take care
of them at home, or maybe a grandmother.  Every day, because grandmothers
and grandfathers are also becoming revolutionaries and rebelling.
[applause]
-END-