HAVANA, Cuba.- This December 20 marked one hundred years since the founding of the Federation of University Students (FEU), by Julio Antonio Mella, in the heat of the university reforms that were shaking Latin America. His main aspiration was to promote university autonomy, expel corrupt professors and achieve greater student participation in the University Administration and before all legal and legislative entities to avoid expulsions and arbitrary mistreatment to which students were subjected.
These noble purposes that contributed to the empowerment of university youth, strengthening their commitment to the most pressing problems of their time, have been distorted throughout six decades of dictatorship, during which university autonomy, essential to justly defend the rights of students and teachers, has become an unconditional subjection to the Communist Party of Cuba.
One hundred years after that dream achieved by one of the most admirable young people that Cuba has produced, the FEU celebrates its tenth congress under the shameful weight of servilityof having accepted the arbitrary expulsion of teachers and students whose only “crime” was to question the bad management of the government and worry about the future of a nation that lies in ruins.
Nothing remains of those founding objectives. Through seduction, promises and repression, Fidel Castro corrupted the organization that had supported the revolutionary struggle against Batista, always in defense of democracy and believing that the eloquent bearded man would act as guarantor in restoring the rights violated after the coup d’état in 1952.
The FEU celebrates its Congress today in the midst of a serious crisis that threatens the survival of the nation. However, he continues with his head down, thus tarnishing the memory of young people like Mella and Jose Antonio Echeverria; the latter endowed with a leadership that cast a shadow over the ambitions of Fidel Castro, who ensured that the organization would never meet a similar champion.
Nothing remains of the University Student Federation that opposed other dictatorships and deeply felt the injustices suffered by the Cuban people. From the spaces that today host the tenth congress, the same rhetoric heard during the recent sessions of Parliament is raised; an ancient and cowardly discourse that only serves to infect the new generations with the vileness of the “historical” and continuity.
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