IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 102

the liturgy of class struggle and the trivialization
of a reality that is issued from an official tribune.
Another testimony collected by Álvarez
Rodríguez ratifies the importance of the Primero
de Mayo and Perret Ballester for the sugar industry’s functioning:
Manuel Eleuterio Fuentes Torres: “We had firstclass centrifuges here; they were all automatic,
even the secondary and tertiary ones. Perret’s
workshops at Primero de Mayo were responsible
for making so many of them. They would make
centrifuges and pumps there. Only one was
American; it was left behind, so to speak, for historical reasons. The entire pumping system, too.
Ah, everything at the tandem was made by Perret;
the feeders, all the tandem designs, with the four
crushers. Perret would always come when we’d
do maintenance at the mill two or three months
before the harvest. He’d come to be there for the
adjustments in the settings.”
Perret Ballester was essential to sugar production
in the province of Matanzas. His knowledge made
up for shortcomings in the maintenance of our industrial park; it’s due to that initiative and the efforts of men like this that the Cuban sugar mills
were able to work despite decades of backwardness, accumulated deficits and an extra ܙ[