12
PARTISAN REVIEW
to turn barracks into schools,
yet today you have militarized the university and placed all
educational institutions under Castroite military control.
Obscene guards whose pincers strip Cuban adolescents of their
desires.
The Minister of Education in Cuba holds his office with as much
justice as the Minister of Justice holds his.
In Pinar del RIo he recently declared : "A good teacher is a
militiaman with a solid socialist morality."
In 1984 the Ministry of Love controls repression and proclaims
that "Ignorance is Strength"; your devoted followers have translated
the slogan into Cuban in this way :
"It is better to have an illiterate Communist for a teacher than
a competent non-Communist."
Poor Cuba!
The classic writers used to say that brains were better than
books, but today, in Cuba, muscle is better than meditation.
If
students want to hit the books they have to put their books away and
work like slaves.
Cuban students have to pay for their studies with unpaid labor
in work camps .
- It is difficult to believe that the young - children and teenagers
- have to spend an important part of their time as students doing
the kind of farm labor that is illegal for minors under eighteeen years
of age in France or Spain .
You have a license to give lessons to the whole world, but the
only advice you accept is
approbation.
You permit what no other American tyrant has dared to allow .
If
a fascist dictator from Patafascilandia sent out ten-year-old
children to fertilize the fields, the world would rise up in righteous
and reasonable indignation.
Cuban children and teenagers who don't obey your commands
are labelled "ideological diversionists"
and sent to concentration camps.
Look at the tasks you force these sad little Hercules to perform:
All citrus fruit in Isla de Pinos, Valle de Picaduras and Sierra
de Cubitas is picked by junior high school and high school students.
The planting and cleaning of sugar cane is the responsibility
of young students.
