I wanted to be a “Conrado Benítez” alphabetizer

By Liudmila Peña Herrera

Long times later, Amalia Teresa Ricardo became aware of the pitfalls of time. It happened when she returned to the same ground he had walked when he was just 12 years.

She tried to find the road to the Rey neighborhood, in the municipality of San German, in Holguin province. She sought the railway line and the road, which at that time served as a point of reference for their parents during the first visit. But she could not find them.

Special Education in Cuba: the book and the flower

By Liudmila Peña Herrera


Special Education in Cuba, has new motivations this year because we are celebrating 50 years of its creation. The birth of the Cuban Revolution with its ideals of equal rights for human beings, opened a new way for all people with disabilities.
In the case of children, adolescents and youth persons with special educational needs, the strength-and power-as inescapable priority, attention, education and protection.
The creation of specialized schools to encourage their development, parent training and family, availability of itinerant teachers for infants who can not attend school, are some of the actions that have been carried out during this half century.
Special Education in Cuba welcomes children with different special educational needs, such as: intellectual, sensory, visual, transient (behavior disorder and mental developmental delay), physical-motor, those related to the area of ​​communications and related to behavior. 
In the Holguin province there are about 30 educational institutions for different specialties, divided by different territories, and two Day Care Centers dedicated solely to these infants. Only in the capital city we can find several schools such us "Renato Guitart" (mental developmental delay), "The Golden Age" (for the blind, strabismus, amblyopia and deaf and hard of hearing), "Luis Escalona" (behavior disorders ), comprehensive training school "Calixto Garcia" (behavioral disorders) as well as others, among which include joint centers.
These finds of educational institutions Cuban students receive subjects to prepare them to safely integrate into society and their self-esteem rises, contributing to their intellectual and emotional development.
Special Education in Cuba will celebrate its half-century building on 4 January 2012. The country's authorities are striving to continue this work of love and solidarity, through which the Cuban Revolution showed to his people and everybody's transcendental that human beings learn and appreciate the knowledge and sensitivity, with a book and a flower in each hand. 

Puerto Padre: its sun and salt

Puerto Padre bay. Photo: Liudmila

By Liudmila Peña Herrera
A friend has written a post that I have "taken the words." It talk about the semi-abandoned villages that still keep their magic to not forget them.
My town are not abandoned (I think it never will be). Because poetry of the sea, the breeze that ruffles the loves and stirs the clothes ... protects it against forgetting. And it can happen that tomorrow comes another hurricane to steal their wealth, in attempt to steal their soul, but the spirit of my Villa Blue Mills backtrack along Libertad Avenue, in search of a pier-magnet that keeps stories of love, initiations and farewells.
I loved as a child, when I started my trips to the local library, for books "I should not read yet." And I found among the lyric poets (Renael Gonzalez, Maria Liliana Celorrio, Miguel Navarro ...), the painters and afternoon sun and salt to keep their parks.
I loved the small space after wooden benches near the waters of the bay, because there is nothing better than sitting back waiting for happiness as evening falls under a coconut tree and feel the caresses of the wind and the waves in this quiet town without much traffic or walkers. That's when one is torn between indecision to stay forever or open the wings and fly away.
Then, a seagull lands on my shoulder and if I said before: "No, I'll never leave," now I'm facing this computer screen, just under 60 miles, collecting snails in my palm. While pressing the keys, I imagine my friends every birthday, telling the same stories about six or seven years ago.
I can tell stories from Independence Park and its amphitheater, the Local Museum, the Salcedo´s Castle , the Mothers´s statue, about the beloved Maximo Gomez Avenue, Columbus's history, its beaches, its people ... But do not seek to take stock of wealth and beauty: just want to get me in good faith in this feeling for my people (always with airs of town), which return each time with a larger space to hold it in my heart.

To see this post in Spanish