Articles and Reflections
This is a political reflection. To be more precise: it is another proclamation. Exactly one year ago today, on July 31, 2006, I issued the first proclamation. But the year gone by is worth 10, for I have had the opportunity to live a unique experience which has afforded me information and knowledge on vital questions facing humanity, knowledge I have conveyed to the people of Cuba with the utmost honesty.
Do you think that you merely enjoy the Pan American Games? Think again, and you will realize that no matter your age, you run, jump, put the shots, throw javelins, discuses and hammers; soar above hurdles and tracks, relay batons, spike balls, score a basket, row, execute ippons, turn your rival over, follow strategies, splash water over yourself after running for two hours and even stop taking in the oxygen that your lungs are demanding. What a wonderful show the athletes put on for us!
What, from the technological and economic points of view, has been the worst problem faced by poor countries? The brain drain.
A short while ago I was saying about the brain drain that is disgusting.
The Cuba—United States baseball match has been announced for 8:00 a.m. At that time I am sometimes in dreamland. The weather prevented the game from taking place. I think that the celebrated match will begin on Friday at 8 a.m., if the weather doesn’t force a change. Our athletes are ready to compete even in the mud; but that is not the case with their adversaries who would prefer to share first place. We shall see what happens.
Aren’t you watching the Pan-American Games? I think I hear many Cubans asking. Of course I am! I answer; I can hardly get my eyes off the TV set. Sometimes I forget about the time when I should take some meal or pill. And then I complain because no one dared to pull me away from a baseball inning when the game was quite even, Mayeta was batting, two men were on base, and there was one out.
I mentioned something and included a quotation on this topic for an example I used in my last reflection, titled "Bush, Health and Education", which I dedicated to children. In this reflection, aimed at the first class to graduate from the University of Information Sciences (UCI), I shall delve more deeply into this thorny issue.
I will not refer to Bush's health and education, but to that of his neighbors. It was not an improvised declaration. The AP agency tells us what his opening words were: "Tenemos corazones grandes en este país" (We have big hearts in this country); he said this in Spanish in front of 250 representatives of private and religious groups, foundations and NGOs who had come to Washington with all expenses paid by his government. Of these, some 100 came from the United States.
The National Directorate of the UJC (Communist Youth League) agreed to communicate the following measure as it was concluding its strategy: “Last Saturday, July 7, the National Bureau of the Communist Youth decided to tighten up the plan for the mobilization of forces of the Student Work Brigades (BET), guided by the principle of using students for tasks of a social and recreational nature, in numbers adjusted to a necessary minimum and within municipalities where they reside, in order to avoid relying on transportation.
The founding fathers of the American nation could not imagine that what they were proclaiming at that time, as any other historical society, was carrying within it the seeds of its own transformation.