They prefer designer trainers and firm steps on paved roads. The countryside is a distant phenomenon, a frozen image which has lost all its splendour and is stored somewhere on the back shelves of their memory.
A mattock, a rake, a yoke of oxen, a straw hat, country boots and the burning midday sun…but all this is old history, something that the current younger generations find too common and tasteless.
Any willingness to work the land, such as sowing fields and harvesting crops, is greeted by an enormous flood of apathy, which threatens to break through the dikes that still miraculously protect our country from utter devastation.
Proposals suggesting that young people could return to the country are usually met with annoyed faces and with reactions that clearly express their strong dislike for the idea: “Have you gone mad?” Although many people opt for a more discreet form of rejecting this possibility, deep inside they all strongly wish to pronounce those four words which perfectly depict their flat out refusal to work on farms.
After several steps in the wrong direction, which were attempts to change the social-economic environment, the Cuban Government is now seeking for a way back. In the past, the leadership insisted on an absurd program of industrialization, which favoured urban growth at the expense of rural development. However, their projects, which failed to bring about any sustainable results in agriculture, started from a false premise as to the real possibilities of our country.
It was a big foolish mistake to adopt special decrees and other harmful instruments, which would force millions of young people to schools, which neither took into consideration their vocational profile, nor the criteria which the students have to meet in order to succeed in their field. The revolution has produced a gr