Minister of Education changed

By Weekly Archive On Apr 23, 2008

Minister
of Education changed

A
service by the Radio Progreso Alternativa Havana Bureau

According
to an official communiqué, Luis Ignacio Gomez has been
substituted as Minister of Education by the Council of State at the
request of the Cuban
Communist Party’s Politburo. Ena Elsa Velásquez Cobiella,
until now president of the Frank País Higher Pedagogical
Institute in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, has been
appointed as Gómez’s successor.

The
country’s educational policy was harshly criticized by participants
of the recently held congress of the National Artists’ and Writers’
Union (UNEAC).

Experts
involved with the educational sector for years agree that Gómez’s
substitution was inevitable and that the criticisms at the UNEAC
Congress were the straw that broke the camel’s back. However, they
also stressed that the key are the educational policies to be
implemented.

Fidel
Castro backs substitution of Minister

In
a "Reflection" published on April 23, in Cuban media, under
the title "The Living and the Dead," Fidel Castro gave his
"total support to the decision by the Party and Council of State
of substituting the Minister of Education."

According
to the Cuban leader, Gómez "was truly burned out. He had
lost energy and revolutionary conscience. He should not have given
his latest speeches and speak of future meetings of educators from
the Western Hemisphere, exalting a work that was the genuine result
of numerous revolutionary officials, and not a personal merit, as he
tried to make our guests believe."

Fidel
also wrote in his Reflection that he felt it was his duty "to
point out that in the last ten years (Gómez) had traveled
abroad more than 70 times. In the last three years he had a rate of
one trip a month, always using the pretext of Cuba’s international
cooperation. Because of this and other elements, he has lost trust.
Even more so, he is not trusted at all."

(To
read the complete text, in Spanish, of Fidel
Castro’s "Reflection"
go to Manuel A. Ramy’s blog.)

Food
imports will grow to more than $1.9 billion

Pedro
Álvarez, director of Alimport, the Cuban government’s food
importer, during a press conference said that the country will spend
$1.9 billion dollars abroad for food. In 2007, the Cuban government
dedicated $1.6 billion to purchasing food.

According
to Álvarez, the extra $300 million are due to higher food
prices as well as to the increase in freight charges.

Cuba
imports 84% of the rationed food distributed to the population at
subsidized prices.

In
relation to measures that are being taken in order to decrease
dependence on food imports, Álvarez said that results will not
be perceived overnight.

Women
police officers break-up demonstration

In
the early morning of Monday, April 21,
the Ladies in White, a group of wives and relatives of prisoners,
began a protest in a park in front of the Ministry of Computing and
Communications, near Revolution Square.

The
group arrived around 6 a.m. and according to taxi drivers parked in
the area, police officers asked them to leave quietly. In answer, the
Ladies in White refused to leave and lay down on the ground. Sometime
later, female police officers and other women from the Ministry of
the Interior arrived and carried or dragged them to a bus that took
the group away.

One
of the cabbies that witnessed the event, said to journalists, that he
saw no abuse on the part of the police. "They just carried them
to the bus."

Opposition
sources in Cuba confirmed that those living in Havana City were taken
to their homes, while others that came from provinces like Matanzas
and Villa Clara were also transported home. There were no arrests.

Every
Sunday, after attending Mass at the Church of St. Rita, in the
neighborhood of Miramar, the Ladies in White march through the
central divide on Fifth Avenue. They ask for the release of their
imprisoned relatives, who were sentenced from 18 to 28 years in
prison in 2003.

According
to the Cuban government, they are not "prisoners of conscience",
but have been found guilty of receiving funds from the US government
and assist its plans for the overthrow of the Cuban revolution.

On
Tuesday, Cuban media published an official note that labels the
incident as a failed "blatant and brazen provocation," and
that the Ladies in White had received "a telephone call from
U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who with obvious
interventionist purpose encouraged the action of these factions as
justification for receiving the funds provided by the Yankee
government."

Cuba
increases exports

During
a presentation for the country’s top exporting companies, Minister of
Foreign Trade Raúl de la Nuez said that in 2007 Cuba reached
the highest figure in the export of goods of the last 27 years. An
increase of 27% was due to the nickel, biotechnological products and
generic pharmaceutical products.