IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 67

ary school. The icing on the cake, as one
might say, is that college prep ceased being
selective if you spent three years at a Rural
School, with their deficient food and living
conditions that required even parents to try
to bring about an improvement.

our future, the one for which we sacrificed
ourselves. Our present didn’t matter, because the future would be better. This is
how we have lived, with our eyes on and
efforts invested in the future, and for this
we lost our ability to have a present. Our
lives became trapped between a terrible
past, prior to 1959, and a better future that
is failing to show itself to us. The present
never existed and now will become the past.
I am talking about the people. We are
many. There are millions of us searching
for a lost present, because we have to recover our hope.

Let’s not even talk about their organization,
or discipline, or the quality of their classes.
The decadence that is quickly and thoroughly permeating Cuba’s educational system is extremely palpable. Nowadays, we
have to make a supreme effort to provide
our children with a few crackers or toast,
mayonnaise, a guava bar, etc. And this is

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