Chilean, Cuban youth leaders share views
The heads of Chile’s and Cuba’s Communist Youth organizations met Thursday in Havana to discuss “the current state of their respective organizations and the tasks they’re carrying out,” the daily Juventud Rebelde reported Saturday (May 31).
Karol Cariola, 27, secretary general of the Chilean group and a deputy in Congress, “explained the main transformations being made in Chile by the government of President Michelle Bachelet,” the newspaper said.
“Among them, she pointed to the educational reform, an issue that triggered a social revolution in 2011, as an expression of the discontent that exists regarding an educational system that segregates children and young people in the southern nation.”
According to Cariola, “the reform, described by [Bachelet] as the most significant in Chile in the past 50 years, has as its principal goals the end of profiteering in the system and the quest for free quality education at all levels.”
“These reforms, and others being weighed by Bachelet’s cabinet — such as radical transformations in the tax system and a new Constitution, still under study — are part of her program of government, supported by 62 percent of the citizens in the latest election,” the newspaper says.
The reforms “must still be approved by Congress, where the struggle against the rightist benches looks difficult, Karol pointed out.”
This is not Cariola’s first visit to Cuba. She was there in April 2012 with other Chilean student leaders and was introduced to revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
At Thursday’s meeting in Havana, Guillermo Tellier del Valle, president of the Chilean CP, “referred to the nefarious work of the communications media, in the hands of the right, against the changes that the government is trying to implement,” reported Juventud Rebelde.
Sucelys Morsa, general secretary of Cuba’s Communist Youth (UJC), gave the Chilean visitors “a detailed explanation of the UJC’s work and its leading role in the economic, political and social transformations occurring in Cuba.”
More about the visit to Cuba of the top leadership of the Chilean Communist Party can be found in this issue of Progreso Weekly by clicking here.
[Photo on top was taken during a 2012 visit when Karol Cariola met with Fidel Castro.]
