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• 06 / 16 / 2009

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Culture minister and member of the Political Bureau Abel Prieto presented the institution’s founder and director Eduardo Heras León with the high distinction, which acknowledges the significant and constant contribution of this project to the development of young talents and to the nation’s spiritual life.

During the ceremony, held at the Cuban Association of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), the idea conceived by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro of inaugurating the University for All television program with the course on narrative techniques, given by the Center’s founders, was brought to mind as a moment of notable inspiration.

In the course of a plenary meeting of the National Council held in 2000, the leader of the Revolution, in a dialogue with Heras León, expressed his interest in finding a way to develop the craft of writing.

So Fidel conceived, recalled minister Abel Prieto, taking what had been devised for groups of 20 or 25 writers to a massive scale: some 800,000 copies of the tabloid that would support the course were printed and distributed, that had a significant impact on the promotion of the habit of reading and represented a more intense way of enjoying literary values.

In its ten years, over 600 writers from all of the country’s provinces have come to the center, who, besides receiving classes on narrative techniques and literary appreciation, have debated the most pressing problems related to culture from the perspective of a genuine commitment with creation. Modesty, revolutionary commitment, and concern for the spiritual growth of the majority have been the center’s objectives since its foundation, which contrast with the individualistic poses of those writers promoting information monopolies and publishing empires subjected to the implacable laws of the market.

Heras feels the awards obtained by graduates from the Center as if they were his own, and the books they have published his own harvest. In his words of thanks, he placed passion as the main virtue of the institution’s work. For one of the graduates, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, Ernesto Morales, another virtue is the continuous reinventing of the creative pedagogical process. For another founder, narrator Francisco López Sacha, the main thing involves something we have learned from Fidel: that perhaps an idea is not born with all of its clarity, but that it can only triumph when the principles behind it are well defined and firm.


(Granma)