President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez visited the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University in Havana (CUAJE) yesterday, and while interacting with students and professors commented, “Your experience … is like the “magical realism” of Carpentier, which seems so common to us that we can overlook the greatness of what we do every day. Just enduring the blockade every day… is huge. We need to share these things… position them on media networks; make them visible.”
In the first part of his tour, at the Integrated Technological Research Complex (CITI), with Havana Party and government authorities on hand, as well as professors and representatives of all departments, Danhiz Díaz Pereira, general secretary of the Young Communists League on the campus, reported on efforts in which students and staff participated “in this time of struggle of the people,” noting that, while a group worked to prepare space at the university to serve as an isolation center for contacts of COVID-19 patients, many students went out into the municipalities to battle the epidemic.
Photo: Estudios Revolución
These students took their a world of knowledge to the community: some were engaged in measuring the use of electric energy, others have known for a long time that sunlight is a resource that can be used in multiple housing designs, a young electrical engineer stated, adding: “The University can solve a lot for the country.”
Yanet Rodriguez Acosta, professor of Industrial Engineering, recalled how they contributed to making wheelchairs available for those in need, and emphasized the importance of popular participation and control, of which the university students were protagonists, getting “involved” in the problems of society.
Díaz-Canel stressed that we need to express our dissatisfaction with what is not right, and take responsibility, see how we can participate, to support, to transform, to propose and find better solutions.
He noted that, despite the brutal tightening of the U.S. blockade and financial persecution, the country has developed three prototypes of ventilators, four candidate vaccines, more than 460 research investigations, and a long list of achievements. This has given us lessons and strength to face any other problem, he insisted.
“We have a strong knowledge sector in our universities, where the most innovation is generated. We want a productive sector that is innovative… We need to promote this interconnection.”
(Taken from Granma)